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This episode is the final of a four-part mini-series focusing on leader-manager decision-making interactions with associates. The first episode in this mini-series described what I call Approaches to Managing. The second episode looked at specific Leader-Manager Decision-Making Options when working with associates. The third episode focused on the Collaborative Decision-Making option. This final episode focuses on the delegative decision-making option by discussing the Art of Delegating. The episode stresses the importance of looking at delegating as an investment in both the quality of the decision as well as the development of people.

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In this insightful podcast, guest Andrea Taylor, the founder of TalentXponential, discusses the shifting dynamics of the workplace and the importance of meaningful work in fostering employee engagement.

Taylor expresses her wish for businesses to focus more on their social responsibilities and to invest more in their employees. She raises concerns about the low level of employee engagement and the particular burden borne by women juggling work and family during the pandemic. In her closing remarks, she emphasizes that work should be fulfilling and leaders should aim to create meaningful connections with their employees.

Andria consults with mid-sized, high-growth businesses to develop their leadership bench. Regardless of the industry, strong leaders are the key to any organization’s success. Andria understands the challenges executives face in keeping their top talent and ensuring leaders are ready and equipped to effectively lead teams and drives organizational results. Her goal is to ensure companies have the right people in the right roles at the right time.

Andria Taylor leads TalentXponential, a consulting firm that “builds leaders for growing companies.” With over 15 years of expertise in developing exceptional leaders and leadership development programs, Andria has worked in the US and internationally in a variety of industries including healthcare, hospitality, insurance, construction and not-for-profit.

Andria received her undergrad from UC San Diego and a Masters in Adult Education from NC State University. She is certified in Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Crucial Conversations, Change Management and executive coaching (CTI).

Contact Andria

Andria Taylor / Chief Talent Officer at TalentXponential

Web site: https://talentxponential.com/ 

Must Read: https://talentxponential.com/how-to-keep-your-best-people-for-yourself/

Phone: (619) 777-6227

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andriataylor/ 

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The U of SC football program had just won the first Bowl Game in the 100-year-plus history of the school.  

After joining the rugged and tough SEC in 1992, the Gamecocks were still struggling to be the elite SEC teams like Florida and Tennessee.  

Tennessee had a young QB with a head-turning last name…Manning.  We had a pony-tailed enthusiast named Taneyhill, along with two offensive lineman, two running backs all headed eventually to the NFL.  

We were desperate for a signature win in the SEC.

JAMES DEXTER STORY at Tennessee turning the table over, driving down to the five yard line 

• 2nd and 1 (5 yard penalty): (7:40) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jPj3LKGMhc
• Blocked FG Returned 95 yards for a TD (9:51): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jPj3LKGMhc
• 56 - 21 Final Score…

Often, in life, sports, and business, we do desperate things in desperate times in order to solve desperate problems.

The last 2 years have created a desperate longing.  Let’s articulate the challenge that you are up against today.

PAIN - Skyrocketing material and sub Pricing, Uncertainty, Subcontractor frustrations, Schedule delays, unrealistic clients, and PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE!

Let’s think through some of the desperate things you (or someone you know) may have tried in the midst of a desperate situation in your business…

• Go more intensely after deposits, draws, or receivables
• Maybe you’re in a habit of using tomorrow’s deposits, to pay yesterday’s payables
• Hiring Marketing companies to get more leads/sales b/c “Sales solves everything right????”…even though we don’t have measure in place to manage the money even if it did come in
• Tried to buy bulk material and it’s dropped your cash flow
• Build Bonus structures and increased base comp, b/c “more money means people will stay longer”
• Just putting your head down and doing it yourself…”it’s just easier”
• Tried to fix your schedule, or job costing, or projections schedule…but it just takes too much time
• Hired new PM’s and Supers, Fired old PM’s and Super’s
• Hired your brother or your cousin, or your son
• Take on more work even though you are way behind on receivables and never properly job-costed previous job to understand profitability

We are running around, spinning in circles, a slave to an over-heated market, the client, to the employee, to the sub, to the vendor.

And we just want it to STOP.  Just for a second so we can catch our breathe. 

Talked to a custom builder in Kentucky two weeks ago who said, “I’m actually looking forward to a market slow down.” I was waiting for lightning to strike. 

You had a grueling week, and then you have a Saturday where you are fired up about a late breakfast where you are going to eat donuts, cinnamon roles, pancakes, bacon, cheese grits… then after you’re done, you turn on a game on tv watching world-class athletes and think, “I need to work out!” 

Chaos can often translate to unhealthy habits because we are vulnerable.  In the chaos of the pricing increases or material delays, we tend to rest in the false comfort of cash flow, while KNOWING that we are neglecting the discipline of purpose, process, and systems that will create a long term FIT-ness for us, our team, and the mission we are on in our business.

I’ve seen it reported recently that both Quarterback Russel Wilson and basketball mega-star Lebron James each spend over $1 million on the health and fitness of their mind and body.

Here is a hard reality…trying to control pricing and material logistics is like trying to control the weather…you can’t control the weather, BUT you can forecast and adjust plans based on the latest information…and PRE-PARE.

I love the world prepare…it’s actually two words in Latin 

 

• Prae (Pre) = before

 

• Parare (pare) = make ready

How do we make ourselves and our business ready BEFORE the next step?

A friend of mine, Chad Jeffers is the lead Dobro player for Carrie Underwood.  He was passing through Columbia, SC a couple of years ago as we were in town and we had coffee in the lobby of the downtown hotel he and the other band members were staying at.

I asked Chad a simple question that I had never asked, “what is it like to play in front of all of those people?”  His response was sobering.  

He mentioned that most nights he forgets where he is at, and that the “repetition of the event” can get quite boring.  In order to be great and find joy in touring, you’ve got to go back to THE FITNESS of your repetition and training.

In preparation for Carrie Underwood’s Las Vegas residency shows, Chad said…

"Typically for tours (including Vegas) we will rehearse for a month and half to 2 months (7 days a week) prior to the first show. Personally, i prepare for the rehearsals about a month prior to that (especially if we are learning new music). "

Kobe Bryant was 41 when he and his daughter died tragically in a helicopter crash in January of 2020.  

He was notorious for his relentless work ethic.  Writers Scott Davis and Connor Perrett chronicle some of Bryant’s more remarkable disciplines.

• Practice from 5a to 7a…in High School
• Shaq said he would practice without a basketball…just visualization and mind preparation
• Had Nike alter a few millimeters off the bottom of his shoes to achieve “a hundredth of a second better reaction time”
• You must “love the process…the daily grind…this generation loves the results too much.” - Kobe Bryant’s conversation with Nick Saban
• “I loved preparation more than the competing part” - Kobe Bryant’s conversation with Alabama Football Team
• NBA Scout in 2008. -“Allen Iverson loves to play when the lights come on.  Kobe loves (playing) before the lights come on.” - 

Here is a question for us.  It’s easy to scream, yell, turn over tables, run out of the tunnel with a new idea, rally the troops for a momentary push.

What about you?  In the face of unpredictable pricing and material concerns, and personnel challenges, and disrupted construction schedules…will you commit to play BEFORE the lights come on??

The best bourbon is PREPARED before it’s aged and evaporated. 

The best wine is PREPARED with full ingredients before it sits.

Some of you are coming to the BuildExpo hoping for a hail mary, hoping for a silver bullet, a bright idea that will change the game for you.  

I want to offer you something else.  

When explorer Ernest Shackleton was preparing for his Trans-Antarctic Expedition, he needed the right team.  It is said that he published an advertisement…

"Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey. Small Wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success." 

The advertisement may not be true, but Shackleton’s expedition with his crew aboard the “Endurance” was heroic and transformative for an entire British society.

Reading through Alfred Lansing’s aptly titled book “Endurance”, you realize what kept Shackleton and his 27-man crew alive during months of isolation and loneliness in what has been billed as one of the most remarkable pictures of survival in modern history.  

What two things kept these men going, when all other expeditions facing similar challenges, died?  

FITness and repetition.  

In the new unpredictability, do you want to stop spending your days putting out silly fires?  You want to discover REAL purpose in your business?  You want to make time for what matters most? 

To emerge out of the fog in this unpredictable market, you must commit to great preparation by becoming F.I.T.

 

• Fundamentals

 

 

• Five Stages Of A Business

 

The most fundamental step to creating a FIT business, is to painstakingly spend time on the fundamentals.  Blocking, tackling, throwing, catching

The second step in becoming FIT, is to…  

 

• Invest In People

 

We must go back to the fundamentals, we must invest in people, and in order to restore business FITness in an unpredictable reality, we must…

 

• Trail A Mentor

• Bill Gates famously said, “Everyone needs a coach!”

 

FINAL STORY:

FITness is no longer optional.

Les and Sara Claxton…Les PREPARED, he made ready, everything is volatile in his world…and he was ready.

Are you?

ACTION: Which of the 3, needs to be your 1st priority after you get out of your seat?  

Fundamentals? 

Invest In People?
Trail A Mentor

If you want to test your business fitness, go to mybusinessonpurpose.com/healthy

There’s a hit show out right now called Yellowstone, and while I can’t fully endorse it due to there being quite a bit of language and adult content, there have been some amazing quotes that have caused me to think. So... for the next several weeks I’m going to dive into some of these quotes and talk through their application to business and life. Good afternoon friends, Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here. 

Ok, so why Yellowstone? Why pick a show that’s basically a Wild West version of a soap opera? Instead of sarcastic words, using guns... Well, Because all of life is learning. And I feel like in watching it, I’m learning and using this stuff to make sure I’m not off-axis in any area of my life.

That’s why one of our core values here at BoP is Relentless learning. Because in every situation in life we want to listen first, process, and then learn and implement from that. So that’s what we’re going to do today.

So... before the quote, some backstory in case you haven’t watched it.

Kayce, one of the main characters is haunted by his past and is trying to save his marriage. He takes a new job as livestock commissioner in helping the rural farmers and cattle ranchers in any way possible.

He comes home one afternoon and his wife looks at him and says this.

“You really love this new job don’t you?”

Kayce’s response is what struck me.

“I feel like for the first time I’m fighting for people. I like having somebody to fight for rather than something. When you fight for a thing, the thing doesn't care if you win or lose because the thing ain't alive. But when you fight for people, they care.”

How powerful is that? “When you fight for people, they care.”

I wonder what you’re fighting for? When you look out over the next several years of business, what is it you want? And if you get it, can hold onto it, in your hands... do you think looking back that it will make you happy? Will you be satisfied? Or will you just kick the can further down the road knowing you missed the mark?

Here’s the interesting thing we’ve seen over the past several years. Money can’t be that object. History is littered with people who made it financially and they are just as miserable today as they were 10 years ago. We have seen numerous businesses “make it”... doing more business than they ever thought and bringing home life-changing money. But... if the relationships in their business aren’t sound, if all is not well at home, if their marriage is struggling, it may help, but it doesn’t satisfy.

Look at shows like Shark Tank. These billionaires sit in on these presentations just trying to add a few more millions to their portfolio because all they know how to do is add more.

What if we flipped the script and started chasing after what we really want. And that’s healthy relationships and equipping people. 

Because you never sit with someone at their death bed and they say…”I wish I’d made more money in my life.” Or, “I wish I’d worked 5 more hours a week.” No! That never happens. People always wish they’d spent more time with the ones they loved most and invested in the people around them.

So, what does that look like practically?

Is it sitting down with your employees and hearing them out? Figuring out what their dreams are and help them achieve them?

Is it planning some team days where you do speed dating or team day at the go-kart track to promote some laughter and community?

Is there some serious work that needs to be done on the culture of your business so that your team knows you care about them? Do you forget birthdays/anniversaries, do you acknowledge big wins, and celebrate hard work?

Or is your team just punching in and punching out, just waiting for the next Friday afternoon or next week-long holiday?

You spend too much time at work to NOT invest in the people around you. That’s why I love that quote, money, products, your business, it doesn’t care if you win or lose... it’s just a thing.

But people... PEOPLE always care.

So start fighting for the right things. So that years from now, you can look back and realize you were working for the right stuff all that time. So that when you see people succeed and success is lying in the palm of your hand you won’t be wishing you fought for something else.

People care if you fight for them... Man, that’s good.

Have a great week everyone!