The "People First" Philosophy: Boosting Value with Trust and Honesty - Part Two (#272)

This week on the Maximize Business Value Podcast, Amy Morin and Jonathan Reynolds conclude their discussion on how create high-performing teams, why peer accountability is critical for success, and how to define a "toxic boss." Don't miss the conclusion of this insightful two-part series!

Tune in weekly to hear more from Mastery Partners and to receive relevant key content on your journey to maximizing your business value!

Podcast Chapters:
00:00 — Introduction
01:08 — The Power and Dynamics of Peer Accountability
04:08 — Accountability vs. Toxicity in High-Performing Teams
06:23 — Building Enterprise Value Through a Deep Talent Bench
08:33 — The "Lottery Plan" and Cultivating a Three-Year Talent Plan
13:12 — Human Energy, Growth Orientation, and the Potential to Change
15:38 — The #1 Tip for Building Business Value
17:45 — Outro

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Learn More about Amy Morin
Amy Morin is an accomplished entrepreneur and Business Growth Coach who brings exceptional value to your network. She has an impressive background as a Certified EOS Implementer®, Outgrow Sales Advisor, and Certified Exit Planning Advisor®. What makes Amy truly remarkable is her real-world success. She co-founded and scaled a company from zero to $40 million in revenue across multiple states before executing a successful exit. Later, she purchased a struggling Montana fly-fishing resort, implemented effective systems and accountability measures, and transformed it into a profitable enterprise that she also successfully exited.

Learn More about Jonathan Reynolds
Jonathan Reynolds is a Visionary, entrepreneur, and game-changer who has led Titus Talent to the Inc 5000 list for SIX consecutive years. He brings nearly 20 years of experience in the recruiting industry to the table and is committed to equipping organizations with unique approaches to better understand their people, foster alignment, and create optimum performance among team members. Jonathan’s passion and thought leadership shine through in the Talent Talks Podcast, an incredible resource that provides practical strategies and innovative ideas, centered around his people-first philosophy.

Jonathan is a champion of generosity, and he has a never-ending commitment to creating a lasting impact in the lives of our people, partners, and the world. Last but certainly not least, Jonathan is a bestselling author of Right Seats, Right People: A Leader's Guide to Hiring and Developing Top Talent.

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Transcript

Tom Bronson (0s): Welcome to the Maximize Business Value Podcast, brought to you by masterypartners, where our mission is to equip business owners like you to maximize your business value and achieve the exit of your dreams, whatever that means to you. With insights gained from over a hundred business transactions, we share real world strategies, lessons, and expert advice to help you build long term sustainable value in your business.


Each episode is hosted by one of our Mastery certified partners, their seasoned experts who've helped countless business owners navigate the complexities of growth, scaling, and building value. They bring firsthand experience, actionable insights, and a passion for helping you build a business that thrives. So, let's dive in.


Speaker 1 (57s): This episode is the second of a two part release. To hear part one, follow the link below. Thank you for listening to the Maximize Business Value Podcast.


Amy Morin (1m 8s): Second thing that I see teams struggle with is peer accountability.


Jonathan Reynolds (1m 14s): Ah, yeah.


Amy Morin (1m 15s): What do you see in that? Or can you lend any insight being the talent expert?


Jonathan Reynolds (1m 21s): Yeah. I think this is a tough one. I think when you have a, a team of mediocrity and, and not a high performing team, but a a mediocre team, that's an environment where people don't wanna be held accountable. They don't wanna hold each other accountable. They're okay with media. Media. Yeah. Like, that's okay. It's like we're all just happy to be a team. Right. You know, it's not about, you know, that's kind of the like, oh, it's not about winning, it's about having fun. Are we having fun? You know what?


There's not a competition I wanna be a part of. Like, I wanna know, I wanna be on that block. You know, I want gold, but silver, bronze, but I don't wanna be in last place. Like, that's ridiculous, you know? Right. Yeah. It's not just about having fun. Like we have a goal and objective and there's, there's a, a quanti. It's quantifiable. There's winning or losing, like how we know we're winning. Now, the definition of winning can be different things. It can be like, we wanna be the best at, we wanna be the the most valued, we wanna be the most consistent, whatever that, whatever winning looks like for the goal or objective of your organization.


Maybe you're not-for-profit. Like, well, here's our goal. Like winning is, it's almost unattainable. We want to end such and such in our lifetime. Like, whew, that's a tall order, but it's like this, we are gonna fight for this every single day for every last breath, you know? Yep. But in an organization that has a very high standards and high stakes, you better believe it'll attract winning personalities who want to Yes. Themselves personally accountable. And then peer accountability will come a lot more evident because they're like, do you care?


Do you care about our goals here? And so you'll find a lot more like, I'm not gonna throw you the ball if you're gonna fumble every single time. Yeah. That's great. That's great. If you are not somebody who shows up to practice when we are practicing, if you are not gonna be the person who's there practicing and be there first, if I see you coming in not showing I'm, when we're actually on the field, I'm not gonna be kicking the ball to you. Like it's just not happening. Yeah. Like, I don't trust that you are taking this seriously enough.


And so you see that we have very, very high capacity and high personally accountable leaders. And, and, and I'm, I'm thinking of somebody in our, in our organization who's just, it's like unacceptable for my teammates to not hit their numbers. Like, I will hit my numbers. It is not acceptable for you not to. And it's like, woo. You know, it's a great thing. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. It's like, oh my gosh, how do I get this to work together? Because there are different levels of capacity as well. There's some people who are like, they've got other, and this is where that human element, like somebody might have a messy thing going on in their life.


Like, well, yeah. They just found out that such and such in their family is going through such and such and it is real as raw, as vulnerable. We need to cover for them while they're down. Yeah. We can't cover indefinitely, but because we care, we're gonna cover for this period, we're gonna rally around them if you have greater capacity. And they only have, it's like Brene Brown talks about that, you know, marriage isn't 50 50, you know that Great, great. Oh yes. Talk about sometimes it's 70 30, you, you kind of like, I've only got this much to give.


Like, it, it is really bad if you both have, I've only got 30 to give. Like, who's gonna come Exactly. Reach into the depths of our souls to have grace for one another in those moments. I think it's the same in a high performing team. We understand when there's an injury Injury. Yeah. Like, alright, you got injured. Like what are we gonna do? It sucks. Yeah. Like, this person is not gonna be giving 110%, like I'm expecting them to. How long can we, that's what you have subs for and things like that. We carry the weight together. Yeah. But I think a high performing team has very, very strong peer accountability and those who can't take it and say, I don't like this environment where I'm held accountable.


Yeah. You see this, I hear this in interviews. It's kinda like, oh, I had why did you, what about, tell me about that last boss. Oh, they were toxic. Describe that toxicity to me. I really wanna understand it. Like, well, every, every week they wanted me to like explain my numbers and where I came in. And if I came in below, I had to give a reason why and what I was gonna do about it next week to make up for it. Like, that's your definition of toxic toxic boss. So the exchange of a hundred percent pay equals a hundred percent performance is not a concept that you subscribe to.


So you would like to receive a hundred percent of your pay no matter what level of performance you bring in. Okay. That, that's just not our definition of to definition of toxic. That is called accountability. Right. And that is exchange of value for value creation. That's what that is. Yeah. We are gonna show you how much we value for the creative value you bring to the organization. If you are not doing that, this is not an environment for you. This would be a toxic company, like quote unquote, you know, it's like we don't see that as toxic.


We just, we just see that as a team that wants to win the Super Bowl. So.


Amy Morin (6m 23s): That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So using that same team analogy, again, often when I'm working with companies and, and you know, in our EOS sessions, being a person originally from New England, I am a Tom Brady fan, there's no question about it. Right. Some people love him, some people hate him. I get it. But there's a lot of great stuff about Tom Brady in terms of the discipline that he has used to get to the career that he has. And, you know, when it comes to his discipline on the field, his discipline with his teammates, his discipline with what he eats, you know, how he thinks.


Yeah. All that kind of stuff. But I've also read something recently about all the different layers of benches that he created. Right. And so, yeah. And we need to, again, to keep a company that we are looking to build value in, you wanna create a bench, right? You wanna create some depth. Yeah. So that, and if at some point you leave this business and either voluntary or involuntary, there's still a great asset there that somebody can take on.


Yeah. So how do you recommend, like companies that are thinking about either promoting from within or maybe GA gaining some talent from the outside world to bring them something that they're not typically, that they may not have internally. Like how do you recommend them thinking about that? You know, how do we create a deeper bench?


Jonathan Reynolds (7m 50s): Yeah. I think this is that, that, that great quote says, A great leader is not the one with the most followers, but the one who creates the most leaders. And so getting, getting people to think, Hey, I have a career growth and goal and aspiration. I would like to be doing such and such. I would like to take on more. I'd like to have a team. I'm okay. Great. So part of that development process is who will take your job or a portion of your role that you'd no longer do. Who will be doing that?


Amy Morin (8m 17s): Yeah. And so let's pause there for one second. Do you recommend that that leaders have these conversations on a regular basis, quarterly con integrate those into their quarterly conversations? For sure. Sure. Like they're always building their back, for sure. Great. Yeah. Keep going with that then. Yeah.


Jonathan Reynolds (8m 33s): I, I think even if somebody says, I have no aspirations. I don't wanna go anywhere. I wanna do this job until I retire. Okay, cool. Well, we do ha need to have a, i I I was told I need to use the lottery plan, not the hit by a bus plan. Just so everyone's, oh, okay.


Amy Morin (8m 47s): Okay.


Jonathan Reynolds (8m 48s): We'll, we'll put a positive spin on it. Someone's like, that's very negative. We'll, we'll get really PC in in 2026. So the lottery plan, if somebody wins that wins the lottery, they may decide to no longer keep working. Yes. Maybe they wanna keep working voluntarily only 'cause they don't need the money. But either way, if they're not speaking on the role in your organization, which I'm assuming is a critical and important role, otherwise you wouldn't have them. Yeah. What is the plan if they are no longer there or not?


Not full capacity. So does anyone else know how to do their role? Yeah. And so having a, a successor or having somebody who's a delegate to do, and maybe it's multiple parts of your role, like, Hey, this is a really critical part of my role. If for some reason I went out for some life circumstance, I've got my role divided into five and I have five key players who can step in and take a little bit for a little bit more. And so Yeah. That's awesome. A great way of doing it. Rather than just thinking traditional succession plan, which is, when I say traditional succession planning is more about retirement.


People talk about retirement Yeah. Versus succession, like a culture of distribution of task roles and responsibilities. And so it's kinda like an organization who has, you know, they have the, the, you know, if our whole corporate office got flooded well, and we've got a call center in here, what would we do? They actually have like an insurance call center, like an insurance plan where they can Yeah. Within a certain radius they can, it's a, like a, a ghost version of their call center. They can walk in and everyone carries on as normal, same desk, same computers, et cetera.


When I discovered that, I was like, wow, I didn't realize this. It's a thing, you know? Yeah, yeah. For sure. And so having those contingency plans and backup plans I think is a great part of just leadership. Like, well, who would do this role if, you know? Yeah. I was talking to, to my integrator just this past week, and I'm saying, Hey, there's, as I look at the future here, this is what I know is gonna be happening in the next three to five years. Yeah. Okay. Let's just talk about the moving parts here.


And I'm like, let's, if we invested this, this, and this into that person, do you think they could do a portion of this person's role? And I was like, what do we really need to do that right now? And I'm like, well, yeah. 'cause we already know that's happening and that person can now up slowly and I don't, we have a three year business plan, so Yeah. Why not have a three year business plan for people having a three year talent plan? Yeah. Which is really very hard to do. By the way, I, I remember speaking at the EEO s conference on this, and I felt like I was speaking way more in theory than actual reality because people were asking me questions, how do you do this in your organization?


And I'm like, I don't know if we do it very well actually, but it, like, and so I went away. I'm like, okay, we can do, sounds like a great idea because you gotta stand up and say, this is a great idea. And I was like, oh my gosh, it's amazing. Show me how you do it. And I'm like, well, we don't, but I was talking about this overlay of like, you talk about your business plan as like a puzzle box and say, here's the box, the puzzle, which is a Ziploc bag with a 500 piece puzzle in there. No, no one wants to do it. 'cause they don't what the picture is. But If you show the picture and say, here's where we're trying to be. Yes. If you put this together really well, this is what it could look like.


Where do you see yourself in this picture? What piece are you, what's inspiring to you? Right. And like, I love the v that part of the puzzle, right? Okay. What skills, abilities, education, learning, do we need to invest in you or can you invest in yourself so that you're ready for, to be that piece? And so then people start adding to their skillset and the abilities and capacities to be able to be there. But I think we can do that in our organization. Is there anything in my role that I do that you would like to do? Or is there anything in my role that if you think that I'm not very good at, that you think you'd be good at?


'cause I would be delighted to give it to you. Yeah. Should be going. He's not very good at that, by all means. It's, I probably am. If I'm not good at I doubt I will like it then, you know? Yeah. Because we generally don't like the things that we're not very good at.


Amy Morin (12m 50s): Oh, I totally agree. Yes. Yep. I call those leadership killers, right? That's where good executives go to die when they get stuck in the doing things that they don't like to do. And they're really not good at it either. But I mean, particularly and, and the converse, right? They don't like to do it yet. They're still marginally good at it, and that's really where they get stuck. So Totally. Yeah. Get rid of those things first. Yeah. Jonathan, I always find the conversations about human dynamics and human energy, so good.


And matter of fact, just recently I was listening to a medical podcast actually, and the scientist said that science has finally agreed on the definition of energy. And energy is by definition now, scientific definition, the possibility of something to change, the potential of change that happens in this thing. So when we think about EOS as a human energy, right? Yeah. It's like humans have the potential to change if they have the right direction, if they, you know, feel like they're sitting in the right seat, in the right culture in the organization to help them get there and to help the organization get where they wanna be.


So it's, it's pretty interesting. That interesting. Yeah. Yeah.


Jonathan Reynolds (14m 5s): That, well, that makes me just connecting some dots here. We, we talk about grow. So part of EOS is for growth oriented organizations, right? Yes. Organizations wanna grow. And so, which that's what resonated with me when we first started implementing EOS, was growth. I'm like, yes, I want to everyone growing and rowing in the right direction, and here we go. And yeah, and I always say to our team members, I'm like, growth equals opportunity and it's this opportunity for you. There is very little opportunity if we're not growing and, right.


So it's change the word opportunity and energy in there. It makes a lot of sense. And when we went through a season of about two or three years of like fighting like crazy, it just didn't feel like we were getting ahead back onto our growth trajectory. And it was so frustrating for me as somebody who's growth oriented and trying to lead a growing organization and leading a growing organization with energy and opportunity. And it's like, yeah, oh my gosh, no matter what happens, there isn't this opportunity. It just felt like there's false hope all the time.


Like, it's gonna get better if you just push just Q2. Q3 is gonna turn around Q4. We really believe Q1 is gonna be our year, our quarter, you know, and like, oh my gosh, you come out the gate, we, you know, so draining of energy because we don't have the opportunity for growth and for our team members' hearts and all to be dialed in. So I can, that energy part resonates with me. So, yeah, for sure.


Amy Morin (15m 34s): Yeah. Yeah. Great. All right. Well, again, I could talk forever this afternoon, but as we wind down, I ask all of my guests this final question, which is, what is the one thing that you recommend business owners do to build value in their business? So you can speak from the human, human capital perspective or anything else that you, a nugget that you've had in your company.


Jonathan Reynolds (16m 0s): Yeah, I, I would say care about your people or somebody else will. Yeah, that's great. If you want to increase the value, whether whatever it is to do with your exit or not, if you wanna increase the value of your organization, your people need to know that you care. And there are millions of ways of showing that, and it's unique for every individual. There are some corporate ways you can do it, but also individualistically. And if that runs down through your organization, it's very hard to do that with, if you've got hundreds of employees, kind of one person going, well, how I I do it?


No, no. You model it and let it Yeah. Ripple down and trickle down through the organization. But if people know that they're valued and cared for, and this is why I think the, the piece about trust and honesty and not gossip and not labeling people, if you actually really show care, I think you'll get more out of your people by giving your people more. So give more to your people and you'll get more from them, but really care about them or somebody else will.


Amy Morin (16m 57s): Yeah, that's great. Jonathan, thank you so much for sharing your insights, your experiences. If people wanna know more or connect with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?


Jonathan Reynolds (17m 9s): Well, the company is tightest talent.com. Okay. Personally, you can find me@jonathandreynolds.com or LinkedIn, any social media channels as well. You can find me there, Jonathan D. Reynolds. Yeah. So, perfect.


Amy Morin (17m 24s): All right. Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you. This is the Maximize Business Value Podcast where we give practical advice to business owners on how to build long-term sustainable value in their businesses. Be sure to state tune in and subscribe to our channel so that you don't miss any of our episodes. See you next week.


Tom Bronson (17m 49s): Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Maximize Business Value Podcast. I hope today's conversation sparked new ideas on how you can continue driving value in your business. But remember, it's not just about listening, it's about taking massive action. Visit our website masterypartners dot com for more resources. Grab a copy of any of the books in the Maximize Business Value series on Amazon or via the links below.


And don't hesitate to reach out if you want to know how to apply these concepts to your business. So until next time, I'm Tom Bronson reminding you to relentlessly execute while you Maximize Business Value.