Learning Without Scars
As a third-generation educator, it is easy to say that teaching and training are in the blood for Ron Slee. From his beginnings as a coach, through his time at McGill University, Ron developed a foundation for the work he does today. From working within dealerships, to operating a consulting company, creating a training business and running twenty groups, Ron has been directly involved in this Industry since 1969. Ron has been known as the industry expert for years, and has brought this expertise to bear through his training programs. Today, Ron provides specialized, job function based internet based subject specific classes, job function skills assessments, as well virtual seminars and webinars. These courses are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, light industrial, on-highway, engine, and agricultural industries through Learning Without Scars (www.LearningWithoutScars.com). This platform is a continuation of the work begun by Quest, Learning Centers which was established in 1996. This training is aimed at improving dealer parts and service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.
Learning Without Scars
Coaching Over Commanding in Modern Management
What if the secret to enhancing productivity and workplace harmony lies not in authority but in empathy? With seasoned people-management expert David Jensen as our guide, we embark on a journey of discovery into effective workplace practices. David shares his wealth of experience, particularly focusing on the art of conducting meaningful performance reviews. From tailoring evaluations to suit different organizational levels to the importance of self-assessment, he offers practical advice for fostering commitment and trust. Our conversation is filled with actionable insights that promise to transform how leaders approach employee assessments.
Navigating the complexities of modern leadership, we uncover communication strategies that truly make a difference. As the world undergoes rapid technological and political shifts, David emphasizes moving beyond mere authority to engage with employees meaningfully. By likening first-line supervisors to coaches rather than disciplinarians, we highlight how legacy-building leadership can turn potential pitfalls into opportunities for growth. Together, we confront the inadequacies within traditional onboarding programs and the decline in customer service, advocating for a leadership style that prioritizes people over profits.
Exploring the heart of successful workplace dynamics, we delve into the power of understanding, respect, and empathy. With insights from David and a former business partner, we tackle the challenge of "quiet quitting" and the vital role of recognition in fostering an engaged workforce. We stress the need for performance reviews that extend beyond metrics to focus on personal development and career progression. Throughout the episode, the importance of listening actively and leading with empathy stands out as a cornerstone of effective management, ensuring employees not only stay but thrive. Join us for this enlightening conversation on creating a workplace that celebrates diversity and empowers individuals.
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
David S HD. Aloha and welcome to another candid conversation. Today we're joined by an old friend by the name of David Jensen, who lives on a ranch in New Mexico but who has a very strong and varied background in people issues.
Speaker 1:This is going to be another of our chats about performance reviews and career development, et cetera, and that's as far as I'm going to go before I let David start, and he's been thinking about what we're going to talk about. So, david, there's the introduction. I'm sorry it's not more profound than that, but there's David, up in New Mexico looking pretty relaxed.
Speaker 2:That's fine. Thank you, ron. I tell you as you think about this, if you want to get to the most simplest formula of doing performance review, there's a couple of things to consider. And one is and we're not talking about tying it to money, we're not talking about merit increases, we're talking about giving genuine feedback. And, if you take it to its basic form, there's two areas in which you're going to provide feedback. One is around their individual productivity and what they provide to the organizations that they're a part of whatever that work is and that productivity. The other is the work habits that they bring to create that productivity. So, in effect, when you do performance reviews, you're reviewing both a series of work habits as well as productivity. It's as simple as that. So, if you look at whether you use a paper form or whatever form you use, it should take the lines of how is this person going to get feedback about how productive, how effective they are in achieving the organizational goals and, secondly, how they are as a participant in the organization's success in terms of work habits, in terms of commitment, trust and things of that sort. So those are the two areas that any good review would want to touch.
Speaker 2:Now, if you go online, there must be 50 or 100 different forms for doing performance reviews and most organizations actually end up creating their own, but at the end of the day, it's still going to be about productivity and work habits. Now, an interesting piece of that is it kind of varies depending on what level of the organization you're providing that performance review to. If you're providing performance review feedback to someone who has a stakeholder, say, who may be even a bonusable person, someone who's at the level where they have an interest in the company, then that's a very kind of different review. It's still about work habits and productivity, but it's a review tied to measurable objectives. It's tied to things that were set going forward that then can be measured and evaluated. In that sense, that's generally upper management, middle management, and those things get set in advance of any kind of review. Whether you do an annual review, a six-month review, however often you do it, it should be tied back to achievable objectives, if you will, and you set those in advance.
Speaker 2:Now, down the line in an organization, when you're talking about hourly, maybe first-line, supervisors, where they're not tied to objectives in the same sense as the business plan would be, but they are tied to productivity and tied to good work habits. The way you do that, then, is it's not against objectives but against mission and values. So what you build into your performance review is a statement of mission, and they get evaluated based on how they fulfill that mission. And the mission would include commitment to the customer, commitment to the things that, whatever that mission statement would include and it would be right on the floor. So, from a focus standpoint, the focus changes depending on what level of the organization you sit at, and that's fine, that's as it should be. And as they go up into the organization, take on more responsibilities, then are more in a situation with measurable outcomes, then you can focus it around those measurable outcomes.
Speaker 1:And I've seen it done both ways.
Speaker 2:Now one of the caveats is is how do you handle this from a standpoint of individual feedback? Do you make this top down or do you have them participate in evaluating themselves? And certainly both things have an advantage. What I find is most people are harder on themselves than the person doing the review, almost invariably.
Speaker 1:And there's something to be said for that for them to rate themselves on these issues.
Speaker 2:So, whether it's a pencil and paper online, however you're using to do this, they have an opportunity to see themselves on some sort of a scale Likert scale or whatever from one to 10 on these various issues, and a lot of them can be tied right back to the mission statement and so that they connect the value and mission statement to their own performance, because that connects them to the overall company, and I like that whenever we can do that for sure, Connecting those two.
Speaker 2:So when I give a performance review, it's going to ultimately depend on what level we're talking about. As to how I'm going to go about that, that's one thing. Whether or not they contribute to the review or not. That's a choice kind of thing as to whether you contribute to the review or not. That's a choice kind of thing as to whether you want to do that or whether you just want to top down. Top down is fine, but then they're not a participant. I like the fact that they would be a participant and evaluate themselves, even if it's unrealistic to do that. So those are a couple of caveats. I think you have to decide how you're going to approach that to begin with Questions about those two points.
Speaker 1:I love it. The whole discussion there Give me a bit of a frame here. How long have you been involved with people management?
Speaker 2:Most of my career 40, 50 years. Oh yeah, yes, starting with an HR generalist, vice president of HR, a consulting practice for 20 years, independent consulting, and it always comes back to managing people the right person in the right place on the bus.
Speaker 1:So I think that a performance review using that terminology, I'm not sure that's the right thing, and I love very much your two points of productivity and habits. I absolutely agree with you. It's different strokes for different levels in the organization. My concern is I don't see very many people that know how to conduct them.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because you're right, but it's more facing to that, ron. People don't know how to have a positive conversation with somebody.
Speaker 1:That's right. They don't know how to communicate with each other. They don't know how to communicate.
Speaker 2:And this is just one more example of not being able to do that and partly because there's not a discipline for doing it. It's a little bit like I would tell somebody in an employee relations situation you know you control the conversations. When you have a problem with productivity or work habits, you control that and you can decide when and how you're going to address that, but what you don't want to do is do it on the fly. You want to be prepared, you want to, you want to. It's that delivery that makes the difference, and you're right. I think part of the reason why performance reviews fail is that the people providing their view are not skilled at that, or you know, as it relates to performance review or anything else.
Speaker 1:As far as that goes, yeah, yeah, you know it's many people conducting the. It's like checking a box. That's why I'm doing this and they don't understand. To me, a performance review is me sitting down with somebody that I work with whether he works for me, with me or where and saying what would you like me to do to help you get better at what you do? How can I help you be a better person? And that stops a lot of employees dead. Whoa, wait a second. Nobody's asked me that. Yeah, absolutely, but that's why that's true.
Speaker 2:That's to me what it's all about. I just did a Zoom call today, earlier today, with the lady and I'm teaching her to personalize the rush to walk away from a potential confrontation, prepare her conversation, know what her subject is, open the conversation, deal with the specific issues at hand. And close based on a contract for change in performance and work habit. And I give her a format to do that and we've been rehearsing that. And she told me today. I asked her. I said how's this going? She said at first I thought it was very silly that I'd have to go through all that, but she's now finding out. Particularly when she goes back to that same person, she's given that feedback and closes the loop and says to them how are you doing? You're doing well and using some key principles around empathy and understanding. And she said it's amazing how that person lights up. And I said sure, it's just recognition up. And I said sure, it's just recognition.
Speaker 2:Now you've got to correct a performance or work habit issue, but you do it in a way that is collaborative and acknowledges their contribution and stay away from any kind of threat of a write-up or any kind of formal personnel action. You'd be amazed at how much more people will get on board? Now, I do believe that there's a fraction of people who are out to commit heresy and will never be on board with things and you deal with them in a different fashion. And there you got about 50% sitting there just liking to be recognized and then you got maybe another 20% actually contributing. But taking some of that 50 and move them into that 20 is dollars and cents successful yeah, I.
Speaker 1:I split the the workforce into three categories a 10, a 20 and a 70. 10 of the people in the workforce in life. You don't have to worry about them, they're okay, they'll figure it out right. 70 of the people in the workforce, work is a four-letter word. They grew up in the family, they went to school. They were very obedient. They taught how to read, write and all the rest of the stuff. Maybe they went to technical, junior college, university et cetera. But then they go get a job. Somebody trains them how to do the job. They're told okay, now you work at that, get better at it, faster at it, make fewer mistakes at it and you'll be fine, you'll make more money. And they never give themselves the opportunity to look over the wall and ask the question why? So if anything happens untoward in their life, they're screwed, they're dead meat an accident, a car breakdown or whatever. And then there's 20% that are left behind. There's no clear path to get them from A to B, there's no model to follow. And if you could, just like you said, if you can, take that 20% and make a difference in their lives the way we go.
Speaker 1:And then a guy by the name of Patrick Lincione I think you and I have spoken about him wrote a book a long time ago called the Three Signs of a Miserable Job. It relates back exactly to what you're talking about. The three signs are anonymity the employee doesn't feel that they're known by anybody, including their boss, in the company. Irrelevance they don't know where they fit in the overall scheme of the business. And immeasurability they don't have the ability to measure their own performance because they aren't given signals as to what the job looks like when it's right.
Speaker 1:So we have a boss. You all start out as enthusiastic beginners and your boss then starts to influence you. If they don't pay attention to you, you become disillusioned. If they start bullying you, you're very careful. There's a whole bunch of things and you're much more a master of that than I am. But I really think in the years coming with all the technological changes, things have gotten pretty scary. A lot of people are very anxious and if you look at the politics in this country and it's not just here, it's all across Europe too we're not talking to each other anymore.
Speaker 2:Not in the way we should. You know it's interesting, ron organizations get really excited about doing exit interviews to find out what they're doing wrong, and that's just crazy. By then you've already lost a person. What you ought to be doing is doing engagement exercises every day. What are you doing to engage somebody in a meaningful way? And that's the thing we're talking about. And whether it's a performance review in a formal sense or whether it's a conversation, which is an informal review, how do you engage people in a positive plan sort of way? And that's basic 101. That's just not. That's not changing. But I don't see that we teach people to do that very well. You know, we equip people to be supervisors and give them the authority and the disciplinary stick to beat people with advisors, and give them the authority and the disciplinary stick to beat people with, but we don't really show them how to sit down and engage somebody face to face.
Speaker 1:and the performance review is why they're not conducted well, because they don't have to do that either yeah, and, and I, I take it over to sports and I agree with you 100, you know, I say, okay, show me a superstar, show me a real stud who's a good leader? There's a good coach, coach, and in my mind there's only one. But you look at hockey Wayne Gretzky, an absolute wonderful, best hockey player in a long time, failed miserably as a coach. But my example is Bill Russell at the Celtics. He won in college, he won in the NBA and the only time he didn't win a championship was the first time he was player coach. He just didn't figure out the role. And the next year they won the championship again. But you got to be a people person and we don't seem to have, even in marriages now, raising children. We're not taught how to do that. Part of that maybe is the church, I don't know. We've become very secular about life. Part of that is a breakdown of the family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. But you still engage people as I engage clients and I consult with them and they hang their hat and they say well, what's your strength? Well, I'm a disciplinarian. When they tell me that that's just telling me, that that's an excuse for not how to manage and engage people. I have the authority, I'll discipline appropriately. You know, everyone will get the meeting and it's just, that's the wrong answer. That's not the answer that this generation is going to accept.
Speaker 1:I always use that framework. I go the other way. What's your biggest strength, what are you most proud of? And whatever the hell they tell you, that's their biggest weakness at the same time. And they don't realize what they just told me. You know, yeah, no, I agree, I agree. And so once we get past that, you know I'm really good technically at the job. How are your interpersonal skills, work habits?
Speaker 2:Yeah, mention values you got to build it in there.
Speaker 1:What's your desk look like? Are you organized? Can you find things? It's really old-fashioned stuff. Dave, I don't understand when we're hired. We don't really have a good onboarding program.
Speaker 2:Most organizations don't have a very good onboarding program. Some are more sophisticated where they put people with mentors, but you know that's a cost. A lot of organizations won't stand that cost, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:And you're bringing up. You bringing up music to my ears. Again we talked about. Companies are putting profit over people and, as a result of that, customer service has gone down, customer loyalty has gone down, customer defection rates have gone down, and that's the birth of the internet.
Speaker 2:Sure, well, it's several things. It's expediency over quality, it's a lack of connection on a one-to-one basis with people. It's all the things that we face and it's interesting that it happens at the first line supervisor. You can't fix this at the top of the company. They may create the opportunity, but it's the first line people who have to deliver the goods and what we do for them and prepare them to sit with the people and have meaningful conversations and not be that disciplinarian but to be that coach and provide recognition. And you know, and I know that people remember is that good boss? And I always tell people that I'm coaching. You know what is your legacy? What legacy would you like to leave behind? Well, gee, I'd like to think that everyone I worked with thought I was a good boss.
Speaker 1:That's a nice legacy.
Speaker 2:But that takes work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm not sure that the guy that if the phone rang now and this guy said I need you, I would just ask where he is and I'd be on my way and he fired me five times. A very emotional guy but he supported me, he challenged me, he helped me grow, he forced me to grow and I'll never forget that. And I don't know that we have many people you and I know some folks like that that create culture, that are really caring and help people grow and become much more adept, much more productive. Let me call it Right. But most of the people that you coach need help, like that lady you talked about, and it's typically very simple stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, as I told her today, ron, I said you understand, because she's feeling good about herself, she's made some interactions with people. It's come back in a positive way, she's feeling like she's more skilled. She said I thought it was silly, but what you're telling me actually works and what I said to her is you understand that this is transferable. You know this is the first line supervisor making probably minimum, a little bit above a minimum wage. But I said, anywhere you go in any organization, these skills you carry with you and you'll be seen as being superior right off the bat. So you're not just becoming the supervisor because you've been there longer than anybody else, but you actually know what you're doing.
Speaker 1:And that's where your legacy starts. Yeah, I call that walk around assets. It's what's between your ears. It's learned experiences. More than anything else, part of our management training is how do you give praise, how do you give criticism. They're learned skills that don't come naturally.
Speaker 2:No, and it does come down to self-deprecating behavior, being willing to laugh at yourself. It comes back to acknowledgement. It comes back to empathy Not sympathy, but empathy. Yeah, it comes back to engagement and involvement. I mean, these are real simple things that no one equips you for and if you're being disciplined about your performance reviews, what we started talking about that will be part of it. You will have a process, depending on what level you're talking about and what's in the form and all that, but it's how you communicate that process and you build in that engagement. You build in the empathy and the other things it delivers.
Speaker 2:And it's not just, like I said, the formal once-a-year performance, it's every day engaging the people.
Speaker 1:It's an ongoing thing, Absolutely, Absolutely. One of the things that's amazing in America and this is supported by surveys probably going back 20, 25 years. I've seen it at least for 15, only 10% of American corporations, American corporations, succeed at implementing their annual strategy. Yeah, I'm sure. And when the employees are asked what the company strategy is, only 5% of them can tell you.
Speaker 1:When we started this was about communication, and it ends with communication. What in the heck's the matter with leadership that you cannot communicate with clarity? What the heck your strategy is to every darn employee?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, it's interesting in that book called Blindspot, which is interesting to read. When he talks about this and he says you know we've got this group of people out there who tout their GDP and how much money they're making and how much what's their contribution to society. But there's a whole bunch of people that don't see that, don't feel that and are getting that recognition. So when you say our workers happy when Gallup does their surveys, Gallup comes back and says, no, they're not actually very happy.
Speaker 2:They're disenchanted. Well, how could that be? We're making the companies make a lot of money. We're living in a society with money, yeah, but that doesn't. That doesn't translate into recognition and acknowledgement, it just doesn't.
Speaker 1:And one of my favorite books is a Japanese book called Ikigai I-K-I-G-A-I, which is the Japanese pursuit of happiness, and they talk about four different things. And you know, we're all people, but nobody really teaches us this kind of stuff at school. It's not algebra, it's not geometry, it's not literature, it's not composition or grammar, it's what do you love to do?
Speaker 1:And not very many people think about that. No-transcript. What does your community need that you can provide and can you make money at it? And if you're lucky enough to have those four things together which I've been and I think you've been you're very blessed, because most people don't think about that.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, it's interesting as I was talking to my older brother, who's a few years older than I am and he's like me, he's an attorney. He's now just kind of in private practice helping out some of his old clients and all that he said. You know. He said when you get to our age it's nice to have a passion and have that passion continue on. You know, he said well, why do you continue to work? Well, it's not really work it. Well, why do you continue to work? Well, it's not really work. It's pursuing a passion, maybe not in the same form as I pursued it in the past, maybe not for the same financial rewards, but it's still a passion, and not everybody has that. It's something that goes along. But I think these skills are fundamental enough that you can learn to do them.
Speaker 2:It takes practice. Some people come by more naturally than others, but it's not impossible.
Speaker 1:And performance reviews will get you there. I agree with you 100%. I had a partner in a business a long time ago. His name was Matt Ferries. He graduated from Annapolis, so he's a pretty sharp guy, was a pilot, had a crash so he wasn't able to fly, went to Stanford, got a master's and then was the lunar landing coordinator for Boeing with NASA.
Speaker 1:So the guy's not a slug Right and he trained people in management and he used three words understanding, acceptance and commitment. Everybody has to understand what we're trying to do and that's your habits and productivity. It's communication. Everybody has to accept what we're trying to do is the right thing to do and then everybody will be committed to it. He says. However, the acceptance is where we fail, because the employee hears it from the boss and takes it as gospel. Max says you got to have a debate, you got to have a fight, you got to allow people to say that's crazy, that's the wrong thing to do, and have everybody put fingerprints all over it, not in a vicious way, in a friendly, debating way In this society I don't know that that works anymore but a friendly discussion. How do we get better? And all of us is always better than one of us, and we've stopped doing that.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the other thing that happens is we've become a very judgmental society. I've been teaching people to value. Not to judge is difficult, because when you value, you have to change your attitude. But changing your attitude is not enough. Uh, that's, that's just attitude change and that's nice and you can feel differently and you can embrace diversity when you change your attitude. But to to really embrace it, you have to change your behavior. So I go from changing behavior. That requires a change in respect. It's the difference between acceptance and respect. I can accept diversity, I can accept different styles, but I don't respect it until I modify my behavior. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And that takes work.
Speaker 1:One of the things I say is I can't. I can't change who you are, that's given. But I can help you change your behavior, but it's hard.
Speaker 2:And but that means but you. You can't just simply accept situations. Accepting means I'm okay with it, but I'm not doing anything to affect it. When you respect the situation is that I'm consciously modifying my behavior. I'm aware that I can't do it. I've got to do it differently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why today's generation calls it quiet quitting. I'm going to do the job just to get paid, and then I go home.
Speaker 2:Well, that's that 60-70 that we want to move into that top 20. You got it. We want to say, hey, you know I'm not going to leave here for an extra five dollars an hour because they take care of me. Yeah, that's exactly right. I've seen people quit jobs and lose money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mentioned to you. I was chatting with a woman in Australia the other day on the same subject and she said they've got 650 people. Most of them have been there 35 years. Yeah, they're doing something right. You got that right. I said okay, what's the secret sauce? How's that happen? And the answer that came back to me was the owners are out on the floor with everybody all the time listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting enough. I was going to say it wasn't because of money, not because they pay better.
Speaker 1:No, no, it's never about the money.
Speaker 2:No, no, it's about recognition.
Speaker 1:It's taking the time.
Speaker 2:Well, anyway, get back to our performance review question. I think you've got to look at it from the standpoint of work habits and productivity, and you're absolutely right. The missing piece there is getting people capable of having that conversation in a productive way, and it's fundamental supervision, employee relations, and it's just no getting around it.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned that there's farms all over the place. That's an excuse too. Of course it is. They don't even know what you know, briggs-meyer and all your personalysis is one of the better ones that I've ever seen and used. Disc, all these things. I did this with delinquent children. I was trained how to do personality provost and to come up with treatment programs for them to get them over antisocial behavior. It equipped me very well for the equipment board, david, yeah yeah, yeah, well, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, it's interesting. But I think that you start with those kinds of concepts, ron, around performance review and you train people to have that meaningful eye-to-eye sit-down conversation. That's well thought out and well planned. And then it depends on what level you're dealing with as to what's in that, and certainly bringing mission and value into that performance review is very helpful. Now the other piece which you mentioned is you also can bring succession into that. You know, what are your goals in that performance review? What do you hope to achieve personally and professionally? Because ultimately, people have two expectations for work they expect to be treated personally and professionally. Personally, to be respected and to be handled properly, and professionally, to have a career path of some sort, to have some piece that they can obtain. So when I think about what we expect of our employees, we expect them to be productive, good work habits. What they expect of us is to provide both personal and professional development.
Speaker 1:And the performance review is what ties it together. And career path brings up an interesting aspect. I don't know that we do much of that. As you've said, large corporations, sophisticated places, have that in place. But when we interview people, we have specific skills we're looking for. We hire people, we bring them in, we onboard them, we do all of those things right. But I don't know that we ever sit down and go back into high school as an example and say okay, what do you want to do when you grow?
Speaker 2:up. You know, interesting enough, that's starting to happen. I was talking I'm trying to remember who I was talking to but there's some programs now in some of the high schools where they are identifying. Actually, it was my son's old college roommate and his boy's in high school and they're identifying these kids on a track pretty early on, even before out of high school, for certain kinds of things and the person can sign up for that, whether it be liberal arts, whether it be mechanics, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:They're beginning to see that if they get on board with it early on and it really appeals to them that that becomes a career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a new education. It's not that new, it's 30 years old. My daughter's involved with it. It's called AVID, which stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination, and what Caroline does with her classes. What AVID has asked them to do is, every week, every student in every class has to stand up and, for 15 minutes, tell the group, their classmates, what impact that subject had on their lives. This week Interesting, and they're doing this at 12 years old and younger. Yeah, and I wish the heck I'd had that. It forces younger people to start thinking differently, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting because the Europeans can teach us a lesson. I know in some Norwegian companies they start these kids even in how to confront issues at a very young age and how to identify. It's amazing we just don't do that in this country. We don't have the patience for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my grandson was in the ROTC and he was the commander in his junior year or commandant, I guess, is the right term and he got life lessons, budgets, how to handle leases, get a loan, that type of stuff. And now he's in the Navy and getting unbelievable education. But we look at education. He got accepted at Purdue University. He wants to be a nuclear engineer. What do you think four-year cost at Purdue for a nuclear engineer would be?
Speaker 2:I don't even want to imagine $350,000 before any scholarships. Oh, you're kidding me.
Speaker 1:Now, in the 1800s, when I went to school before you, it was $500 a year, oh yeah, and I still had to work a job to pay for it. But life is so different now and then. So you get these kids with AVID and identifying whether it's technical skills, and the Europeans are way ahead of us but Germany and their trade schools. My goodness, it's wonderful yeah.
Speaker 2:American culture doesn't lend itself to development. We think that we ought to hire journeymen. They should hit the floor running and we're not willing to make the investment.
Speaker 1:When I started in the industry in 1969, we had three apprentice classes going every year. We had a 40-foot trailer that was a mobile school that we went around. We had seven different stores. We went around and had classes regularly and we stopped it, not because it was too expensive, but at a graduation party one guy got drunk and killed himself going into a phone pole and the insurance was too much. Oh for heaven's sakes, isn't that nuts? Yeah, it's nuts.
Speaker 1:It's absolutely nuts and I was an employee three months before. I was down at Caterpillar for a product training school and I wasn't even involved with product. No, no, you know the injection of yellow blood creating the culture, creating the pride of your employment Sure.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a challenge and the thing is you can't separate one from the other. You can't separate the performance review from the need to sit down and have coaching conversations, not to be the disciplinarian but to be the helper, to be the mentor. Again that sounds all kind of soft and squishy to a lot of people, but but you and I know both that that pays the bills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah ultimately costs you less yeah, the other side of that is you have to listen more than you speak. And, and you know, my favorite is the conductor of an orchestra. He's the only musician that has his back to the customer Right and his success is completely predicated on the success of the musicians in front of him. He's dependent on them, but when the performance is on, he can't do anything other than give them a rhythm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, it's what happens behind the wall? They sitting down, like you say, having a discussion? How are we doing? Understand your daughter was sick last week. How is she today, knowing that caring enough to be out there with everybody? We don't do that anymore.
Speaker 2:You and I both sound like old men throwing stones at people getting on our lawn, but let's face it, you know it's still just as true as it was 20 years ago. I don't know why we have such a tough time getting around to it.
Speaker 1:Life is pretty simple. It's people that screw it up. David, I've enjoyed this discussion. You got any wise words to wrap it up?
Speaker 2:No, I think that you know what you and I are talking about is a human thing. It's about managing people not as a number, not as a set of numbers, but as someone who has fears and hopes and family issues and all that. And you do it with that kind of understanding, that kind of empathy. The most effective leaders I've seen were able to do that well, and they were primarily because they knew who they were, they were self-assured, they understood their blind sides and they sought out people that covered their blind sides. I mean, it's just always the case and leadership takes many forms, but it ultimately comes down to how you treat people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that. That's a beautiful way to close this, david. Thank you very much. You bet Fine this afternoon, and I'd like to thank everybody who's been listening and look forward to being with you for the next candid conversation.
Speaker 2:Mahalo.
