Sherpa Leadership Podcast

Episode 14 - How To Drive Results Without Burning Trust

• Sherpa Consulting Group

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0:00 | 51:36

The fastest way to lose a team is to chase the numbers like people are optional. Reed Moore and Chase Williams sit down with Mike Schramm, a longtime corporate account manager, to unpack the daily leadership tension almost every manager feels but few can name, valuing results and relationships at the same time.

We get specific about what “results pressure” actually looks like inside real organizations, executive expectations, shifting priorities like margin and growth, and personal scorecards that quietly push leaders into urgency and tunnel vision. Mike shares how his view of leadership evolved over time, from thinking leadership was a role to realizing it is a choice to take care of the people around you, even when you do not have direct authority.

Then we move into the practical side of trust. We talk about connection that is not a tactic, why not every conversation needs an agenda, and how short calendar wedges and leadership by walking around can create real engagement without pretending time is unlimited. We also go to the hard places, underperformance, boundaries, and what relationships actually reveal when results drop.

If you care about servant leadership, coaching, and building a high trust culture that still performs, this episode gives you language and next steps you can apply immediately. Subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a leader who is trying to balance people and performance.

Opening Questions On Real Leadership

SPEAKER_02

Am I relatable as a leader? Regardless of reports and management style and company's mission, vision, values, am I a leader? Am I trying to grow something? It's important to know what uh what your mission is and how it aligns with your companies before you start looking for strategies.

Show Intro And Guest Welcome

SPEAKER_00

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.

SPEAKER_01

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Stirpa Leadership Podcast. You're here with myself, Reed Moore, as well as my co-host Chase Williams. And as always, we are here to help you climb higher in life and leadership. For all of our action guides and our past episodes, go to Stirpa Consulting Group.com. We love providing resources for leaders just like yourself. And we are here today with a fantastic leader, an incredible friend of Chase and myself. What's his name? Michael Stram.

SPEAKER_03

Michael Stram, as we like to call him, or big Mike.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you for having me. Yeah, I mean, I'm excited.

SPEAKER_03

Thanks for being here. Yeah, looking forward to it.

Michael’s Corporate Leadership Path

SPEAKER_01

Yes. So tell us a little bit about what you do. Like what's what's your area of profession and how long you've been doing it?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so so I've been with uh a large company that is packaging distribution. We're based out of Atlanta. I'm just uh I'm a satellite employee up here and just outside of Spokane, Washington. I've been there for eight years. And what I do is corporate account management, national accounts, large account management. I think every big company probably calls it something a little different. So I've been there for eight years, and then prior to that, I uh I was at a company called C. H. Robinson for 10 years, where I did a similar job, but I kind of worked my way up from like an entry level. It was a broker position, is what it was. And I had, I think, six different roles in 10 years and uh made it made a leap to another large company. So I'm a I I like to say I'm a W-2 guy. I'm not I'm not Mr. Entrepreneur. I've been with big companies now for what 18, 19, 20 years, something like that now, and I've really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01

There's this different um uh flavor that we get when somebody's in a nonprofit or they're entrepreneurs or they're in large uh you know, Fortune 500, Fortune 50 companies. There's just different flavors of leadership. And one of the things that uh Chase and I have always been excited about, our relationship with you is you, more than anybody that I know, embody the topic today. Just watching you naturally operate in this area of uh valuing results and relationships. Um, I just want to pick your brain on it because I think you're uh honestly a savant when it comes to this.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I I really I appreciate it. A little surprised, but I'm looking forward to some of the questions inside of it.

Why Results And Relationships Both Matter

SPEAKER_03

Well, I would say I agree, right? Because not only do we get to watch that being in relationship with Mike and how he really does this incredibly well with others, but we get to feel it. Yeah. Like we get to feel how much he values relationships. And we've had a little bit of conversation with you about this even before getting here today on the podcast. And what Reed said about it being natural, I think, is real as well. Because it's like, you know, and we're gonna do our best to kind of draw out like, how does this actually look? And why did you start thinking about this? And now you're teaching it to your kids. And anytime we ever we ever have a conversation around it, it's like, well, I don't know, it's just kind of natural. And of course, uh, some of that's true, but when you put this into practice, I think that there's something that can be learned here by anyone listening. And so when you think about revaluing results and relationships, Mike, why do you think that it's important to think about both in the first place?

SPEAKER_02

The first thing I'll say, great, and good question. I think the first thing I'll say is that it depends on where you're at in your career.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Because I remember when I was at my first big company, at my first what we called a real job, where I had like a 401k and I didn't know what that was. And I so I think about that part was that I had to have results to pay bills. I had to have results and I had a manager. I didn't really, I didn't think about leadership. I had to figure out how to contribute because I wanted to keep my job and and make my job and make money that way, and hopefully grow inside of an organization or whatever it was. As I've kind of furthered inside that career, or anyone's career that you're that I'm that I would be working with, is that uh you have a little bit more freedom inside of that, that that framework, so to speak, of of a large company. And so that kind of helps frame like where my head hears the question is where are you at inside of it? So it could depend.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so okay, so so being in the in the world that you're in, uh you have to get results, right? So what what kind of pressures are you under to get results? Like what's what's your at this point in your career, uh my guess is you're you're working on succeeding personally, but you also have to succeed through others. So what's the what's the lay of the land?

SPEAKER_02

So I would say, and again, I'm gonna give you kind of a larger organizational perspective. Yeah. Kind of my perspective. That's really that's all my experience is. So I don't really have anything outside of that.

The Pressures Behind Business Results

SPEAKER_03

Perfect.

SPEAKER_02

And so I would say before you get to financial results or sales or anything like that, you also have company expectations. So you have the mission, the vision, the value of the company that they're setting, setting forward. And then you have an executive team and a board that works with them, and they might have specific results inside of that mission, vision values, or however however you dissect that. And so, for instance, a a uh a specific one could be that you want margin enhancement for a year. You want to really focus on margin, less about what's coming in the boat, but like how do we really profitize or you know, make whatever's in the boat more profitable, let's say. It could be on growing relationships in the market, so maybe it's a more of a top-line revenue push where you really want more of those fish coming in the boat. And so I think that that's the first thing I would think of. And then you have individual goals. That's actually your individual goals for Mike Shram, individual goals for for you individuals or whoever it is. And so then you have financial goals. You might have goals to make sure that your customers are paying on time. You might have goals that actually they want to get more specific on how much inventory you carry or whatever your organization might be focused on. And so I'd probably put it in those three different buckets for the time being.

SPEAKER_01

So results, my my experience has been that results can create tension in relationships, right? And and we were talking earlier earlier this week, and you know, one of those things that can happen is the the results that create tension in relationships can uh can also, if you don't, if we don't balance and we don't live in the inside that tension, the relationships can actually over time deteriorate the results. Right? So how do you how do you think about that as somebody you so you lead a team, right? How do you think about all of these pressures that you have as a leader and as an individual performer? How do you think of those and also think of of the relationships?

SPEAKER_02

So uh great question again. So I would say I'm gonna I'm gonna take some notes while I do this so I don't leave anything out. So I would say, so I'm the role I'm in right now, I started in as an individual contributor. I I moved out of a leadership and a management role as more of an individual contributor. I still was a leader. I still looked after the folks to the left and right of me. Uh but I would say that with that perspective I had, I still I definitely have a uh I started kind of creating a team around me.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

Taking Care Of People Nearby

SPEAKER_02

And so the folks, the support roles that are in an organization, the customer service person, I would start really kind of putting my arm around those folks and making sure that they were mine. I made sure to take care of them, make sure they were mine. And with that responsibility, uh, you've got to start, you kind of have a dotted line to leading those people. All these support, and so now the team has grown to let's say it's 10 people, and you have all these dotted lines everywhere, but you're still a leader as a person and a contributor. And so I think part of it is uh not just focusing on the scorecard today, the scorecard for the month or the quarter, but how what is that person's trajectory? How does it look for the year? And there's also there's little caveats to all of this, right? So if you see, if you see a uh any employee or a team member that has got maybe a personal issue, they're falling off for some reason in some respect, that's an that's another opportunity to kind of bump people back in line, and there's different strategies to do that. But I would say really trying to manage uh manage a team that you've created is to uh really focus on uh where they're going long term as long as that they want to be in the boat long term. If they want to be in the boat long term, like and we think they're the right, they have the right character and they have the right drive. If they want to be in that boat, how do we keep improving them and not looking so short-sighted and really starting to look at long term, where can this person be? And so yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So you said something that I want to go back to because you just you just said it like uh everybody knows this. Um, but not everybody uh does. And that is like well, you just take you just take care of this person to your right and take care of this person to your left, and you just take care of you, yeah. What in the world does that mean? Like, how do you do that?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think you know, I've always bought into this this thing with leadership. When you're when I was younger and younger in my career, I really thought leadership was the role. You know, I thought leadership was, hey, I'm a manager now, that means I'm a leader, because someone told me I was. And then as I've kind of matured through that a little bit, I realized that it wasn't you don't have to have X amount of people report to you to call yourself a leader. If you're taking care of the folks to the left and right, and I think I stole that from that's probably a Simon Sinek thing I stole or something. But like I but what that is still all the good stuff. I think this podcast is all the good stuff. Any any employee that just that makes the decision that's conscious of actually taking care of people and actually looking after their needs prior to yours, I think is really important. And that's kind of where I and this is probably a different fork in the road, but like I'm a Christian, and so my me and my family follow Jesus. And so, because of that, that's the first guiding light, right? That that's what that's where I'm going first, and that requires me to make sure I'm taking care of others before I take care of myself, and it's the same kind of principle. Servant leadership, I think, started with that. Everyone remembers the craze of servant leadership, and so it's the same idea as making sure that you're looking after other folks, whether they're on your team, whether they have a direct line, dotted line, whatever it might be, making sure you're really looking after the folks next to you. Got it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so what are some practical ways like when you when you're you're in business and you you have to like you are hired to drive something forward, especially in a big company? Sure. Right? And and but now I need to take care of people to truly value the relationships. What does that look like on a daily basis?

Daily Habits That Build Trust

SPEAKER_02

So I would say always engaging them outside of the business that you and they are managing together. So what I mean by that more specifically is that if I if I mentioned how I'm in corporate account management or large account management where you have big business that that an organization kind of surrounds you with, if uh if all of my conversations are about that business with 10 people that I work with every day, I'm gonna be exhausting. And I'm gonna be exhausted every day. And so part of that is making sure you understand their drivers as people. And and not all conversations have to have intention.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, yeah, and say more about that.

SPEAKER_02

And so what I mean by that is that sometimes people talk about the personal part of business like it's a strategic to get more business, or the the reason I'm talking to him about his boat trip is that hopefully he thinks of me with this and it it tees up to me having an opportunity later. Sometimes you call people because you want to call them, because you've got a calling in you, in your heart, or whatever it might be, and whatever your belief system is that hey, I gotta, I gotta reach out to a team member, see how their weekend was. I know they had they mentioned briefly they had a date night planned with their husband.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

They might mention later they're going fishing, you know, with their with their son next week. Sometimes it's just not about business, and I want to check in, see how things are going. It's nice to have more of connectivity than just the business you're leading and managing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Well, my my hallucination is the reason that creates deep relationship is there's a lot more to people's life than what they do for a living. Even when that's an important part, right? Even when it's something they love and it it's something that they give effort to and they have passion around, there's all these other things in life that that exist for all of us. And so if you know some of those things, you mentioned key drivers, things that are important to Mike Schram that have nothing to do with the work we do together. All of a sudden, my hallucination again is that it's demonstrating that you care about them long or far above, rather, like whatever result we're gonna get in the business. Because we're gonna have plenty of time to talk about that. So we don't need purpose to this conversation other than you know I care about you, I'm curious about what you did on the weekend or what lure you were catching the fish on, or whatever it was, right?

SPEAKER_02

And I think that the to add one more thing to that is there's a there's a reality of urgency in business, whether it's big, small, I don't care what size it is, but sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes you can't just have that personal call, you can't spend that 20 minutes with someone to connect and on what they did for the weekend or what they did you know in the evening or whatever it might be. Sometimes there's the the reality of the urgent where it's like, hey, I need this done immediately for our business. I want to talk about that stuff. But that's just something to think about. There is there is times where it's a balancing act in this, and so it comes down to are you related? Am I relatable as a leader? Regardless of reports and management style and a company's mission, vision, values. Am I a leader? Am I trying to grow something? Uh, and then before you, you know, you started with with an organization's goals and like the pressures there, and we can talk more on that too. But sure, I think as you mature in business, you start to have to ask yourself, like, what's your what's my mission, vision, you know, and and value? I think that's just a phrase that I've stolen through years of of being corporatized and working for larger companies. But uh, what's what's mine? So mine in my family, right, is that I want to be a servant leader. You know, I've identified that, and I want to have a personal mission. Like, I want more than just the results. And I've just been blessed to have really great results, uh, very consistent. And I can only I can only assume that some of that is a gift from the Lord. It's not just because of what I do every day. It's and it's not even just our team and how amazing the team that I get to work with is every day. A lot of this could be uh, you know, how how we're being blessed because we're being good stewards of the business we get to manage and and things like that.

SPEAKER_01

So let's say you have somebody and they're they're like uh they're they're driving for results, maybe they're even getting results and they're younger in their career, yeah. And you're watching them, you're thinking, like, you're driving for results now, but if you don't figure out this other element, this is not going to last. But they can't they can't understand that because it's not if you don't think that way, maybe it's not very intuitive because you're just like, you know, uh it's a meritocracy, right? Like that's how the world should work. How do you talk to somebody like that?

SPEAKER_02

So I'm gonna give you a bunch of broad brush strokes. The things that I think about, one is that what were the expectations set when that person came in the door immediately? Do they knew do they know what that relationship with the leadership, you know, the readmore, the Chase Williams, do they know what that relationship is gonna look like? That's the first thing I think about. Um, and then are those goals written down for them and tracked regularly? So the one the one good thing, you know, in big companies like uh the ones I've worked with, we have systems to do this, right? It's like the people tease about Salesforce and other CRMs that manage opportunities and things like that. But the truth is, uh there's the same thing on the HR side, which helps manage the relationship with those employees. Not that I'm a systems guy by any means, as far as like as far as IT systems here, like I'm not the guy on your on your podcast to talk about that. But one thing I would say is that if you set it up to where goals are regularly reviewed, uh you have a time set aside for those conversations that's really more driven to the metrics. And so that's your measuring conversations that you have every week. And so I what I see a lot of leaders do is try to shove all of their leadership into a 30-minute slot every week. And the truth is you don't have time, 30 minutes is never enough. And honestly, then you're gonna change it to an hour, and an hour is not gonna be enough. So you gotta have it's better to have uh multiple smaller meetings on the calendar, touch basis, and make sure that those calendared meetings are actually have an agenda. That's something that I lack greatly. I'll have a meeting that that just says the name of the customer. I'm like, I don't even know what this was, I don't even know what I'm talking about today. That's unfair for the audience, it's unfair for you, and the in this case the employee. Yeah, and so to try to bulletize this a little bit, because right now I'm just kind of I'm painting those those brush those brush strokes, I would say that the first as long as that employee comes into the door and there there's an expectation for results, there's a there's a mission for the organization that he was hired into or she was hired into to drive financial results or whatever those individual goals are. I think where we go sideways is when we try to put too much in each of our conversations with our team. We're trying to make everything land and everything important. You that 30-minute call, I made up you didn't say 30 minutes, but yeah, I get it. Uh you have a 30-minute meeting with one of you, let's say if you have 20 people, let's say, in the organization that are reporting up, you're trying to take 30 minutes in a week to talk about what's going on in the marketplace, let's say. And then uh, hey, how was your weekend? And that lasts three seconds because you've got so many bullet points to get to motor through, right? Yeah. And then you're like, hey, your goals are down this month. It is one big sandwich meeting of of challenge, right? And so if you kind of set out little bits of time, like everyone kind of I I'm gonna be exhaust you on the calendar thing, because this is one of my pet peeves, but like everyone only can go into Outlook or whatever system you use and put 30 minutes or an hour in. It's like they don't know, there's no other time frame that's that exists. Yeah, it's like there's nothing wrong with 10 minutes. Sure. You know, or less or more, you know what I mean? Like there's nothing wrong with that and say, like, hey, let's talk about your your goals right now. I see you're struggling last month. Let's I just want to focus on how you're how your production looks. What are you doing? How can I support you? And a lot of the times what you'll find out in those little meetings that they're gonna come prepared for that discussion with goals. And when they do that, when they come prepared with it, you're gonna you might uncover, like, oh, they're not getting the support I told them I was gonna give them. It's not them, it's me.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah right?

SPEAKER_02

Or it's it's something similar to that. And so just as a suggestion, something that I've personally done, I would I'd love, I love dialing out the week like that, but I do think it's necessary to have very focused meetings so that everyone knows what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01

I love it. I love I love the idea of um uh so Juliet Funt is somebody I've listened to recently, and she talked about putting wedges in your day, which is instead of having all these 30-minute meetings, like put a wedge in there are five minutes or ten minutes of 15 minutes for connection for all of these different things. And for for the relationship side, I love the idea that a relationship doesn't just develop and happen in 30 minutes. Like we can hit it, we can we can talk about goals or metrics or whatever in this in this very structured time block. But uh if I have a wedge and I walk around the office or I'm looking you know, I'm thinking about somebody, I can I can pull them aside and be like, hey, how's it going? And if I can do those kind of things throughout the day, I have uh more of a rhythm of relationship that I can add into the mix.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, the way that I was taught it um or heard it, I guess, and so learned it that way was it's called leadership by walking around, which is the opposite of a structured agenda meeting so that we can be efficient, right? Leadership by walking around is like I'm gonna take 10 or 15 minutes in between meetings and hey, Reed, how was your weekend, right? Man, you said you're going fishing. What'd you catch them on, right? How was date night last night? You mentioned that you were taking your wife to a new spot. So it's like this idea of like I'm authentically, but even though it's in my calendar, taking time to not have an agenda, just like you said, not every conversation has to have a purpose, other than like I care about the people around me and I want to know what's going on in their life. And or if I noticed someone that that morning in the meeting that like seemed a little off or down energy-wise, I can say, Hey man, how's it going? Everything going okay? You doing all right? Anything I can help you with? And so that was this idea of like really structured meetings versus like, no, we're just we're just being in relationship for a few minutes here.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02

So I act like I prescribed this idea of calendaring your day, but I'll tell you what, I make fun of it more than I probably do it myself. And another broad brushstroke I'll paint over the top of what I just said is that there's nothing more exhausting than when you try to get a hold of someone because you do have some urgency. Let's say you have an urgent matter, and it's not gonna be usually goal-driven, because if goal goal conversations shouldn't be so urgent, right? Generally, you should, I mean, as long as you're staying connected with people, like you should know where they're at. And so, and then they should know where they're at as well. But uh I the brush stroke that I'll give is that when you reach out to someone and then they say, Hey, I'm I'm in back to back meetings for 12 hours today. I think that's crazy. And so, and I and don't get me wrong, I've been the guy, and I've I honestly I think I'm that guy on Wednesday, and so yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, but I I don't want to ever be so busy that someone can't reach out. And this is where I get those 10 and 15, 20 minute meetings as opposed to 30, where I can't shove in a 10-minute conversation with someone that wants to follow up with something that's on their heart, on their mind, that's affecting their day-to-day. I I also so again, I'm I know I'm going both directions on this. I probably sound inconsistent.

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's the tension we're talking about, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

This is exactly. And so, like, this is my it's like you can't be just the guy that walks around all day. Yeah, you gotta have some, you gotta have some professionalism to your to your leadership, right? It's a skill you're building. It's not just the God-given, hey, this guy's a people person, if you remember that phrase that used to be common. You don't hear that anymore. But like leadership again, it's a choice. And so we've got to also, you know, inside there's decision making. If you're gonna be a leader or a manager or whatever it might be, you also have to make the decision like what is your strategy, knowing that the other side, not everything can be a strategy.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And then you don't want to be the person that's not available for 10 minutes to follow up on a large opportunity or something that they need help with, or it's a new part of their business that they just they just really want some direction from you. You want to be able to give it to them.

SPEAKER_03

Sure.

SPEAKER_02

You know, you want to be able to say it's not gonna be immediate always, but you want to say, like, hey, I got 15 minutes after lunch, let's connect really quick. Let's kind of work it out, and then if we have to follow up, let's do it here.

Hard Talks When Results Drop

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and I think you mentioned the tension, right? It's this idea of results, which can be usually pretty easily measured, right? That doesn't mean they're everything, it's just they're they're more black and white versus relationship, which is not black and white, right? Our idea of relationship might be different. How much relationship? What does that actually require of each other? Like there's this art and science of leadership, right? Which is why that tension exists. It's also why the topic is values, results, and relationships. It's not a never an either-or, but I but I have a question for you here, Mike. And it's when have you seen where like a great relationship with someone you work with has become valuable when they're not getting the results? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

That maybe they need to or they're supposed to, or they maybe they've even gotten them before, but we're in this space where like I'm leading someone and they're not getting the results that they need to get for their role. And I and I and if I have the relationship, what's the value there?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think you're you're probably tugging at some heartstrings a little bit because I've I mean, I'm I'm of a person that has uh unfortunately had to let go some of my best friends before, which is a terrible feeling.

SPEAKER_04

Sure.

SPEAKER_02

Right. It's awful. And so because you if you're if you choose to look after those folks in the left and right, you develop good relationships, and sometimes you just have like interests. Yeah. And that personal might grow a little bit better than the the professional does.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And so when that happens, and let's say that the results aren't coming and you're doing the right things you feel like, and you're really you're having those conversations and you're kind of scheduling out to make sure that they're supported, and it just doesn't happen. Unfortunately, there's a process to that. And you got to start, you I mean, you have to start having more conversations about productivity. And usually you learn something inside of that. You usually learn like, hey, I'm just I'm not into it, I got a lot of personal stuff going on, or I have another opportunity. Or there's usually a story to that, I feel like you can pull out, and that's that's something that would probably better answer your question. That's what I'll get out of a personal relationship. It's here, what's the reality? Right. What is the reality behind the production? You know, and so I think that's where it's uh letting go of a for of a person that's a personal relationship is never fun. It is it is always hard. You cry at home with your wife. Yeah, it's okay, you know. Anyone that at that ever tells you that they enjoy the process, I don't I wouldn't trust him.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I always thought it'd be so easy to be a sociopath in business. No, no, but I mean I'm a softener.

SPEAKER_02

I'm a soft, you know, letting go of people's is is is tough, you know. It's it's lives we're talking about. But it's if you do have that to better answer that though, if you do have a personal relationship, at least you're you're speaking to someone's heart a little bit more than you're to soften this podcast up. But like you're speaking to someone's heart and their family a little bit more than just that just the facts, yeah. And you're trying to understand what's going on. Because you do want those folks to to do well and hopefully, and you usually they do. Usually you find out that when they call and they're gonna call you afterward and find out what they're doing next. And hey, that was a good step. And every great leader has made the phrase, has said the phrase, oh, we should have done this a year earlier. Yeah, you know, if you knew it was gonna happen, you know, you should have had that conversation earlier.

SPEAKER_03

And so yeah, if I I my my thought, right, is you're gonna have a much better chance truly understanding what's going on with that person in that season or that moment that's causing them not to get results. Because it's not, it's almost always the thing behind the thing. Like you said, something tough's going on in life, or there's another opportunity maybe they've been thinking about, or whatever it may be. But if I can't get past the surface of all we do is get results together, yeah, to find out, hey, what's going on with Mike, then I just have less of a chance of helping, serving, helping you get over the hump, whatever it may be. And so, you know, like you're sharing there, it's like it makes it in some ways a lot harder.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

When you have to make really hard decisions.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03

But if you truly want to serve someone, then how do you do that without being in a relationship with them, right?

SPEAKER_02

Well, and it's not like uh one works and what the other one doesn't. That's something to think about too, because I've seen some of the best leaders get too involved, and I've seen some amazing leaders get really create a lot of space between their teams. Sure. You know, and I I you've seen them successful, and that that's probably a good thing to probably dive into as well, is that like what you know, this is uh we have the opportunity to talk scholastically about leadership. Sure. When you sit down and actually think about it, and then when you're in the weeds and you're in the thick of it, you sometimes you don't have uh you don't have the time, you don't have the bandwidth to do this, you know. I mean, there's a there's a thousand different YouTube videos, and I've listened to let's say, let's say half of them. And I've listened to them on on how on like the challenges leaders have, and I you one one that we always tease about is that uh, oh, he was a great contributor, so they put him in a leadership role. Sure. And they they it's really chalked up, I would say, and more of a and I say scholastic because I don't know what else to say with that, but like more of a professional perspective on that. And I laugh at those those findings because it's like, you know, the person that hired him in that role probably knew that. But he's I mean, his brains are blowing out right now. He's he's got too much going on. He knew this was a band-aid, and band-aids are a bad thing, we get it, you know, in business. But the truth is he had to get on the other side of something. And so I see probably the softer side of like there's reasons that these things happen.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, I think about, you know, if you go the direction of saying, yes, it actually matters in healthy leadership to value results and relationships, you're intentionally choosing a harder path. You're choosing to have enough relationship where it matters and it hurts when you have to have hard conversations, when you have to let somebody go. And kind of what I think I heard from you before is maybe there's a um, you know, there there's almost like a uh um a scale or a scope of people's leadership where some people are gonna naturally not be as deep into the relationship. But if they're consistent, they're gonna consistently um attract people, that that is kind of the nature of the relationship, and you're gonna have people that are far deeper down that well of relationship. And somebody who's more transactional is not gonna be a good fit, even if they're a tremendous leader. Sure. Right? There's gonna be some some variant between the way that we all operate and still live in the tension.

Boundaries And Different Relationship Styles

SPEAKER_03

So, like the word that comes to my mind is boundaries. Right? Or or like depth of conversation is the way you said, or relationship rather, depth of relationship is the way you said it. So, like when when you're so naturally gifted at building great relationships with people, and we talked a little bit about the value that brings when we also need to talk about results on occasion because we work together. Um, how do you set the right boundaries? Or how have you seen this done well or not well, even in your experience around, like, hey, we're we're in a relationship, but we're in this kind of relationship, right? Because I've seen there, I've seen that challenges can can come up come up there, right? Like you're talking about, Red. It's like, hey, relationship looks like this in our organization, and someone joins who thinks that they're gonna spend every evening and have and be best friends with everyone they work with, and that's not kind of the norm. Right, right. All of a sudden they're like, Oh, I don't have a relationship here, right? So, how do you navigate those boundaries and just the differences that show up with people?

SPEAKER_02

So, when I was in college, uh starting a business that I hired all my buddies was like the best idea I thought I ever had. And unfortunately unfortunately, I didn't I didn't do that, I didn't have that opportunity, but um, I would say that uh I've done it right and wrong uh both times. I've probably had a too much personal relationship, or it was really hard to manage the tactical business, and it was hard to set expectations because it's a buddy, and it I would say the that I've had a I've had a history of getting there. This was not like a a class I took or the books that I read that I've just changed something. I think a lot of this was probably bad experience, which a lot of it felt bad, and it got me to a point where I could figure out how to set better expectations on the front end of a business relationship because I still, no matter what, I'm a personal guy, I I want to hear about your weekend genuinely. Yeah, you know, and sometimes that's those conversations as leaders take us out of the business for a minute to talk about that fishing trip and talk about, you know, and I it's funny we use fishing trip 10 times in this as an example. I go fishing twice a year. I wish I could talk to someone about their fishing trip every week.

SPEAKER_03

Maybe you shouldn't ask more questions about that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I don't know. But I I mean, I would say that that's kind of the first angle I would look at. The second one is you you mentioned it's a gift, and I I do appreciate that. And I've had to, you know, and some of you guys know a personal side is that I've had to kind of wrestle with like what is if it is a gift, what does that mean? But I do I don't want to take away from the effort to train that as well. Yeah, because I I really have spent a lot of time of being intentional about creating relationships, yeah. And it's something I I you mentioned, I think earlier, but like I I make sure my kids are prepared to do that as well. Yeah, and coaching my kids on how this is how you start to build a community, not so much in business, but it really more in like this is how you create a relationship, and what does humility play in this and this is how you do it? And actually, the tell show do model shows up if you're familiar with that. We're like, I'm gonna tell them how to do it, I'm gonna show them how I do it, and I want them to do it, and I'll we'll talk about it.

Coaching Results Only Young Leaders

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So, okay, so let's say you're raising up a young leader, and that person's they're they're right up underneath your your leadership, and they are results, results, results, and they're kind of like burning people up right relationally. It's like, hey, you got a second great, here's the thing I need to think from me. Thanks bye. Yeah, right. How do you hold their hand? Let's just say they're teachable, and how do you say, like, okay, this is what it looks like to start adding the relational value into your leadership?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and I've uh I have some some indirect experience with this more recently, actually. And so uh what I'll say is that uh you would have known, and it's hard to that that's a like a three dimensions there. And so if I'm the leader that's really coaching the person up, right? That that personal aspect of it, I would say that uh I wasn't this wasn't alien to me when we started this relationship. Results people don't just get born, right? When they're 35 and they're like you knew about it the day you hired them, and it's five years later, and now you're in this spot, right? Fair enough. Fair enough. And so I would say uh two things, and I'm gonna do my best to answer it, but I want to offer some watch-outs first. So the first one is that you have to do this very carefully, and as you pull someone into that, hey, you've got to you've got to start working on the second dimension. You've got the results part. Usually those people are fantastic at that. Uh you want to start pulling that dimension of the relational part of being a leader into them. But while you do it, the team that you do it with, you can't start being the relational guy. You can't have results guy and relational guy. And I think it's, or I mean, excuse me, you can. I just don't, I think it's not really, we're not really filling out what we what we have, our capacity.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Right. I think we need to be able to do good in both of those areas. Okay. And so if I start saying, hey team, uh, I know he's really into results. I we know you're working hard right now, and he's really results driven, they're gonna start coming to me. So it might feel good, but it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Yeah, it doesn't mean it's it doesn't mean that that's the the answer. The answer is if you're a leader, you're training other leaders to take that role, you need to start having him do that or her do that skill. And I would, again, just like I would with my kids, I would start doing the the tell, the show, the do, whatever order you want, it doesn't matter to me. But I would start really showing them, like, hey, this is how I enter these conversations. I want you to try this with me. You know, we every every good uh salesperson when they start, if they have a good sales management structure and leadership structure, they do a lot of rehearsing. You know, you're always rehearsing. And so if you remember when people used to call people call customers every day and hit a number of calls, yeah, you're developing skills doing that. It's very similar. Like we we stopped doing that in those entry-level roles, but like we need to do that as leaders too. We need to actually put the you know, put the the boots to the ground and actually say, like, hey, let's practice this together. Like, what is this conversation gonna look like? Like, hey, right now you're all results. Like the only thing your team has heard from you is on driving results, yeah, is on getting in line. It's the other initiative you gave them this week. And so if you don't start acting, if we don't start practicing how to like open up and broaden your leadership a little bit, I think it's I think you're gonna be in for a rough run. And so that might have been a little rough, but I would there's some aspects I want to share with the hood.

SPEAKER_03

Well, and if I was gonna draw out a couple, couple of examples, right? I think first you said, hey, don't don't, if you're leading someone like this, don't put yourself in a position of like, hey, I'm the safe place and and that person's developing.

SPEAKER_01

You should talk to mom and dad, kind of mom and dad, right?

SPEAKER_03

You can cut them off at the knees, even if it's accidental in a real hurry and and actually stunt their development. Um, the other thing is, you know, I think as a leader, what I heard you say, this kind of tell show do is you could even ask someone good questions, right? If I said, hey, Reed, let me ask you something. Of all the people that you lead, I know that you know their numbers. I know I could ask them to you right now, you know exactly where they're at towards a goal. But let me ask you, do you know their kids' names? Do you know what's most important in their lives outside of work right now? And if the answer is no, then well, let's read, let's talk about how you might learn some of that stuff about the people that you want to develop relationships with, right? So you're showing. You're showing like here's some examples, right? And practicing, just like you said, it's almost like we can role play how you can have a 10-minute conversation with Mike without asking him about his numbers. Yes.

SPEAKER_04

Yes, it's as silly as it sounds.

When Relationships Replace Accountability

SPEAKER_03

It's like, no, yeah, it's how you how you develop some of those skills if someone naturally leans one way or the other. And it's the one thing we haven't really touched on uh too much yet, but there's a real danger in in any either one of these being overdeveloped, right? So I think that the danger in being overdeveloped on results we've kind of covered. What if we're overdeveloped on relationships? Oh, yeah, absolutely, and results kind of fall to the wayside. What what's the risk there in leadership?

SPEAKER_02

Well, there is no risk. I think it's the way to be, because I think no, I'm I'm obviously trying to be funny. I think that that's probably my natural inclination. That that's my natural, I have a propensity for that, let's say, but I have a or a draw to it at least. And so um I I've I've done it a couple different different ways. And so I've I would say that uh I went on this pendulum where I was probably too far on the relational side, and I was always, you know, I was the I was the shoulder cryon, so to speak, from a business perspective, but it wasn't helping my my goals and results. And then I was an individual contributor where I was all based on driving those finances, driving whatever goals the company gave me, because that's what was mattered. That's what was on the scorecard. Yeah, you know, I'm a scorecard guy. If it's written down and it's a goal, you know, I that's what I want to reach. And so I would say, again, a lot of this is experience. And so it's probably not great if you're if you're listening to get like the these are the five steps to get over that. I probably don't have that. I just know my experience says that um you have to start in a try to start in a balanced space. If you feel yourself going one way or the other, I think you've got to just be careful and kind of be reserved with that and start taking notes. Start taking notes on like, hey, I'm you know, I'm really good at driving these things over here, but I'm having a hard time on the relational side, or the vice versa is what you ask. But like having a the relational side's easy. I love talking to my team about all these things, but I mean, after that, I really don't want to hear about the goals this week, you know. And so if you I would again it's a little gooey, but I I would say that that's pretty important is is being able to balance the two and taking notes of where where you have uh a propensity to go.

SPEAKER_01

It makes me think that there's this um uh probably really hard uh hard ditches to stay out of, and that is if I'm highly biased in one way or the other, if I don't pay attention to this tension, um, it will become a compulsion. And as soon as I am compelled to constantly look at the world through the lens of results only, any um any correction, any change, any softening looks like an attack on what I would consider reality or truth when that's not what it is at all. So I just think back about you know times where I've been this way or I've experienced this, this, you know, we have people listening to a podcast like this because they want to grow. And one of the best ways I found to not grow is when you get compulsive around whatever your bias is.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that self-reflection piece that you encouraged, right? This idea of like pay attention to which way you lean. Because chances are everyone listening leans one way or the other, either a little or a lot. Sure. Right? There's probably no one listening, it's certainly not the three of us that's like I'm right in the middle of these things, right? Like I value both of these things equally. Like, and and we want to strive toward being closer to that given the situation. But like that's really great advice. I don't want people to miss that. It's like you should know which way you lean and you should actively work on developing the other from day one. Rather than this idea that like this is the only way, this only thing that matters, or I'm great at both.

SPEAKER_02

I think I've given you like three of the day one answers, which isn't fair, right? It's like tell us how to do this. It's like what you should have known before. That's not that's not a fair answer, right? But I do think uh what you're hearing is probably some pain, right? Because I've done it the way where I had great personal relationships. And I have, don't get me wrong, I've I've figured out a balance much more now than I've probably ever had through experience, but where I have a great personal relationship with my team, but we do have goals and we do have objectives, and we work for a large organization that has a mission and vision. I th I do think to restate this is that it's important to know what uh what your mission is and how it aligns with your companies before you start looking for strategies on how to manage. I think who who am I? Like let's let's dial this in first, and then when you show up to work, you at least you have kind of your guiding principles, so to speak, that you're gonna follow.

SPEAKER_01

So I want to land the plane, um, but one of the things that occurs to me just hearing hearing you talk about this is that there's another factor here, and that's capacity. And that is if you don't really accomplish much and you don't really love much, you can kind of stay in the middle easily. But as soon as you start pushing for big results and deep relationships, like you create a chasm and there's there's a level of capacity. So how how would somebody grow their capacity in results and relationships?

SPEAKER_02

You want to add to that? Well, I think through an answer in it.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I mean, I think it's a problem. Yeah, I think I think if you're you're in part, if you're developing your capacity in anything, right? And in this case, we're talking about results and relationships, you have to either be in relationship with or follow or learn from people who are doing it at a higher level than you. Because there's people out there who are reaching for really big results and really deep relationships, and they have them.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Right? And so it's like, okay, well, how are they doing that? First of all, believing it's possible, second of all, seeking out those that are proving that it's possible. Sure. And then learning, just like we're learning from big Mike, right? Like, wow, you you do do it so naturally, but but how can we pull apart the pieces so we can do it better, like Mike? Yes, right? Whatever that may look like, whichever side you lean toward, you might start with the other, but then make sure that you're not swinging the pendulum too much. So I that's kind of my initial thought is like, hey, who who's doing it that we can go and learn from, right? At this size or scale or size of organization or Season, right? You think about people who got great results and maintained great relationships through a season like COVID or something like that, right? So depending on what the circumstances are, um, how do we continue to be um uh followers even while we're being leaders of those that are doing it better than us? Yeah, yeah. Well, let me give it a shot.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you for the buying me some time, Chase. We're gonna question. I would say um I'm of the understanding that there's 24 hours in a day. We gotta sleep, we've gotta eat, and you've heard this. Uh but I don't think there's a silver bullet. I think sometimes what we look at when you see these superstars who are digging deep in every conversation, they hit all the goals, I think they're also in a season. That's something I think about. Because you can only do it for so long. You know, the average executive tenure right now for Fortune 500, I want to say it's less than three years. Yeah, it's very short before they're gonna move into something else. And the reason that I think this is not a psych psychology study, you can only run so fast in one direction for so long before you gotta be picked up off the track, or whether it's the organization picking you up off the track or you're you're doing it and be put it on on another track. And so I think in that 24 hours, I don't think it's I don't think it's always possible. I think you can't you can't have it all. You've got to find balance. I think 24 uh in those, and again, I'm gonna keep saying that, but in those 24 hours, I can I can give my heart to so much and my uh and my drive. And I definitely you you kind of self-allocate that, so to speak, in your mind without knowing it, because you want to be relational with your team. Totally. And you want to have a relationship there. Uh, you want to hit your goals. And I've I have to probably dampen the product the um producer in me sometimes because I definitely have a top contributor mindset, yeah, but I know that there's only so much I can do, and I have to find a balance for all this. So I and so that that's kind of uh that it's almost sounds like a cop-out, right? Like I don't think everyone's doing it.

SPEAKER_01

Well, it makes me think of you know, if if you look at this like a sprinter, but you just you don't realize it, but you just signed up for a 200-mile ultra marathon, you're you're gonna have a really fast, route, really rude awakening. Yeah, right. And so if I can think about how do I grow my capacity, so what I'm hearing is what does it look like for me to grow my capacity, put myself in relationship with people who are modeling this, and then at what level can I now and in the future operate for a very long period of time, um, that's maybe my growth journey.

SPEAKER_02

So let me, I want to give one more perspective on this. And this is the W-2 guy in me that's gonna share this. Uh, one of the ways I did it wrong, and this is a I would say a success story. So this is an interview, I this is the story I'm sharing. Is that uh when I was when I first started as an individual contributor, uh we we grew business exponentially our first two years. I mean, it was double digit, all the numbers were hit halfway through the year. It was it was pretty remarkable, uh pretty remarkable experience to be part of that. If everyone's kind of had a season of that where you've you've really hopefully you've had a season of that where you get a really just knock the goals out of the water. Yeah. And so uh inside of that, what I what you a habit that I developed was not utilizing my team. And so wasn't using, and from a corporate perspective, is that you've got X amount of resources, right? These organizations, they have a team for everything with professionals that do uh they set up the account, let's say, or they do the the admin portion of stuff. They they you have a customer service team that might do the orders that you get from the business that you've won or whatever it might be. And I uh said, I I can do it all. I'm more special than everyone, and I'm I'm Mike Schram, and I'm gonna I'm gonna be the Mr. Contributor. And that worked for a long time. It worked for probably two years, and then we had a certain dollar amount where I couldn't do it. Oh yeah, and I learned that I was flooded and I wasn't that good at any of those supporting roles in the first place. I still didn't know how to do a pivot table on a spreadsheet, but I was you know, I was watching videos on how to do it because for some reason I thought it was a good thing to take ownership of that. Sure. And so one of the best decisions I made was probably only three years ago. This isn't like I wasn't 19, you know. I was three years, this is three years. I didn't make any good decisions. Yeah, this is three years ago, and I really uh relinquished that, and I had to say, hey, there's teams for this, and I had to really let them have it and start developing them because again, going back to my personal mission being a Christian, is like I've got to put faith in them to develop other people. Sure. It's not just about the business I'm building, it's not about me. And so it I had the selfishness I developed by being a contributor that I had to let go of and start say, hey no, this is your part of our business. It's not mine.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's the organization. Well, and it strikes me as such a great starting point for deepening relationships, empowering others, trusting them with their part in the team, and then watching your relationships flourish versus like I'll just do it myself.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_03

Like you could be a lover of people and not build relationships only because I wouldn't I won't let Reed do his part in whatever we're doing.

SPEAKER_01

Mike, give me the ball. Thanks for asking about my fishing trip, but give me the ball. Like, I want to go, I want to do something.

SPEAKER_02

So to add to that the question earlier, when I mentioned 24 hours a day, the reason I put these things together is because we have only limited time. Uh, if you're not leveraging a team that's there for you and you're not growing and you're not getting those deeper conversations, and you're not seeing that development, that's on you. It's on us, right? If and so I guess part of that answer, kind of to bring that one back, is that uh as soon as I started relying more on teams, whether they're good, whether they're bad, whether regardless of my opinion or organizational opinion on them, uh, really starting treating them like a players, and they started becoming what that actually was. They started becoming those A players. And so uh I would say, again, a long, long-winded answer, folks, but that that's something that I uh I found some success in is making sure you're leveraging the resources that you have, regardless of the state that they're in.

Closing Thanks And Listener Call To Action

SPEAKER_01

I love it. Man, Mike, you're I I just we're gonna continue in relationship and talk about this more, but secretly, maybe not so secretly anymore. I'm just gonna mine you for this because it's um like like Jay said, I experience this every time I talk to you. It's not just like, oh, I think you might do this because you told me a story about your business. It's I literally get to experience how you draw people into relationships. So um thank you so much for taking the time today just to just to share a little bit about your world and doing this.

SPEAKER_02

It's an honor to be here. Thank you so much for for having me. Looking forward to the next time and I appreciate it, guys. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you for listening to the Sherpa Leadership Podcast. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share it with a fellow leader. You can find more resources and tools at Sherpa Consulting Group.com. And remember, leadership is a journey. Every step you take matters. So keep climbing, and we'll see you next time.