Ken Blanchard (NY Times Best-Selling Author of One Minute Manager) Teaches Management

Audio Transcription

After selling 16 million copies of the Number One New York Times best-selling book, the one minute manager, Ken Blanchard was asked to speak and teach his proven management systems to some of America’s largest company, including Nordstrom, American Express, Xerox, IBM, and other leading companies can made a poor life choice. He decided to join me on the thrive time show podcast.

What I love about you, what I love about your excitement about learning and learning and learning and sharing. We just need more folks like that. Hey Man. Hey Man.

Yes, yes, yes and yes. Drive based on today’s show, we are having an incredible special guest by the name of Ken Blanchard. But before we get started today, Dr Z, I have a question for you. Sure. Is it not true that you, um, one of the most successful optometry clinics in Oklahoma? Absolutely. Is it not true that I own a chain of men’s grooming lounges? That’s true. Is it not true that you don’t, you own an auto auction, the largest in the state? Is it not true that I used to own a bit massive wedding entertainment company called Dj Connection Dot Com? That’s sort of the street. Is it not true between the two of us? Um, at last count we have built 13 businesses that have to do consistently more than a million dollars of gross revenue. That is correct. Okay. So would it not be true that the hardest thing for most business owners to learn is to how to manage people?

People ask us all the time they pull your sadness is the, I want to pick your brain. How do you manage people? How do you manage people? And people ask me, how do you manage people? And both of us are always saying, well, you got Jack Welch’s book winning and you got Ken Blanchard’s book called the one minute manager. Yes. I kept hearing this idea. So I cold-called the CEO and president of Quiktrip booboo book over and over and over trying to pick his brain and this just in he didn’t want to meet with me was shocking, but eventually his assistant Valerie painter, said, Valerie says, why do you want to meet with Mr Kegel so much? And I said, because my company DJ connection cannot scale unless I learned to manage and I’m willing to pay whatever it costs to meet the guy for half hour.

So I go to meet with Mr. Kegel at the Quik trip facilities, a billion dollar company and Mr Cat. Joe says to me, he says, I said, Mr. Kegel, what is the number one management book that you would recommend? And he said, well, my father, Mr Chester Cadieux told me that if I wanted to run this organization, I first had to read the one minute manager by Ken Blanchard and I’m going, everyone’s been telling me this. He just told me this. Perhaps I should read the book. Perhaps I bought the book. It changed my life, my mind, and my approach to management. And now I am sincerely nervous to have on today’s guest, Mr Ken Blanchard the author of the one minute manager. Sir, how are you?

Well, I’m doing great. It’s good to be with you guys. I love your enthusiasm. You know, you guys are fabulous

sir. Uh, uh, your, your book, the one minute manager really did blow my mind when I read it for the first time. But I’d like to ask you as the author of the book, why do you feel that this book, the one minute manager resonated with so many people throughout the years?

I wrote it with Spencer Johnson and I met Spencer at a cocktail party and he wrote children’s books. I don’t know if you remember the, uh, the value tails, the value of honesty, the story of Abe Lincoln, the value of determination story of Helen Keller, my wife hand carried them over to me first and she said, you youtube ought to write a children’s book for managers. They won’t read anything else. And the only thing I had written at that particular time was a textbook, you know. And so spencer was working on a one minute scolding with a psychiatrist on how to discipline kids. So I invited him to a seminar I was doing so the next week, and he sat in the bag and laughed and came running up and said, forget with parenting, let’s do the one minute manager. And since he was a children’s book writer and I’m a storyteller, we decided to write a parable because we both agreed our favorite books with Jonathan Livingston, seagull, seagull, the littlest prince, and augment Dino’s the greatest salesman of the oil. And, and so, uh, I think why people really enjoy is not only the concept’s good, but it’s a story format and one of the beliefs I have, and you don’t want to overload people with information. They can only handle three or four things. And so there’s three secrets as a woman in manager and if people can remember those three, we think that’s the 20 percent that’s going to give you the 80 percent that you want for managing people. And I think that’s why it’s been so popular.

One of the companies I own the elephant in the room, men’s grooming lounge, and then I have to make your life epic marketing agency and Z, you know, multiple companies. And so, uh, today’s, the, I dealt with a situation where had a member of our team who she is a sweet lady, a really sweet lady and she’s in a management position. That’s what she does. And an employee on our team showed late and she overreacted in a way that was way. I mean it was like the punishment was, would beyond the act. The act. Yeah. And I pulled her aside, I pulled her aside and said, hey, here’s the deal. You overreacted towards something that I emphasize tedious about being on time, but I feel like as a leader, um, I might’ve done a poor job if you feel like that’s how you should have handled it.

Can you please explain to me, uh, what happened? Long story short, I went through your one minute manager, your one minute manager principals to try to correct the situation just a minute. And she left feeling good. But I want to ask you, Mr Ken Blanchard. If you had an a manager on your team, somebody worked for you and they overreacted about that kind of situation. They are just freaking out that somebody’s got to work late. By the way, this personal backstory has been on our team for over three years and is never late and they’re late one time and this person just blows up. Ken Blanchard, what’s the proper way to handle a situation like that?

What are the things I always say is when in doubt confront and when all else fails, try honesty.

Yes.

Hey Mary. I said her name is Mary. Okay,

sure.

You know, I saw the way you responded to so and so is late. It seems to me to be a little over the top. Tell me what was going on with you at that time because when people react like that, I think it has more to say about them than the lateness, sort of the person. And that’s why I always liked to see what was going on with you at that time. You know, and, uh, you get the people to start thinking about it personally and all, but you’re not there to punish them. You’re just sort of say, this is what I observed and I just wanted to know what was going on at this. Seemed a little over the top.

Take a minute, look at your goals, look at your performance and see if your behavior matches your goals. I’d love to have you break down. What does quote truly means?

Well, what it really says is that all good performance starts with clear, clear goals. Okay? So, um, you want to have goals and if you have goals, you want to look at your performance, which is how is your performance a stacking up to your goals? And, and if it’s matching your goals, then probably you know, your behaviors is consistent. If it isn’t, then what’s the problem? And, uh, if you aren’t able to figure it out yourself, then you might want to go to your boss or a mentor or somebody and try to find out because a, anytime that you’re your performances and matching your goals, you’ve got a problem and you got to figure that out. Is it something you can fix yourself or if you need some help, but, uh, uh, all good performance starts with clear goals and it gives you something to, um, to take a look at and determine how you’re doing.

I loved the way that it helps managers, you know, because training of managers is one of the very important thing. And why? Because we all want managers in our business. We all want to manage appropriately and properly. Let’s go into the reprimand kind of part of it. The one minute reprimands, what’s your, what’s your take on? How many times do you reprimand someone before you say fires isn’t negative, negative question is that bad? I mean, the biggest thing,

one minute manager about three years ago. And one of the changes we made is we call it now one minute redirection because I think today, young people like to look at management relationships as a side by side relationship rather than, than the top down. But, uh, uh, you know, what you really need to do is if somebody you know, is making a mistake or that performance of you need to stop them and say, you know, a Harrier Jane or what have you, here’s what I’m noticing about your performance. It’s not quite up to what we were expecting. What do you think’s happening? Is there any way I can help? Uh, so you’re not there to beat him up. You saw to say it there to say, you know, what’s happening? Is there any way I can help because I want to get you back on track and then have a good dialogue, you know?

And if, if you do that, and uh, and then while back, the same thing comes up again. You might go and say to the person, you know, you know, I’m noticing the same thing. And we talked about last time and here’s what we, the conclusion of our meeting, what’s, what’s going on, you know, and uh, to find out, you know, and uh, but, um, I think if somebody continues to make the same mistake like three times of my friend Gary Ridge for president, wd 40 is a wonderful state. It doesn’t fire people. He shares them with the competition, the APP. And I’m going to have to share you with the competition.

Can I want to, uh, I want to give a, I want to confess to Ken and kids that you’re like the management guru. I thought you were to sort of like the pastor of management can. Is it okay if I confessed to you and you can correct me? Do you want some professional music? Uh, well, I just want want, I want to just share this with Ken Blanchard. I want to get these kids take on this. I was a, my first career I had was, I was, I was a DJ, a disc jockey because the cost, a barrier of entry is pretty low. If you showed up on time and you brought the energy and the enthusiasm every night, you’d get hired and if you became a very good entertainer. I feel like before I quit I was probably the best in America in weddings, in terms of just reviews I was getting and the kind of acclaim and the kind of awards and I got to my company Dj connection was very good, but the thing is I would do 50 slash 52 weekends a year.

I would dj every weekend. I would do a little over 100 events a year and I was the head of a company with. We have like probably 10 employees at the time, so there’s 10 employees and as a company we’re doing about 500 weddings a year total and if I ever got a bad review and we didn’t have online reviews, it would be somebody who would call me and complain or they would tell their friend. I wasn’t very good and very responsive. I would can. It would. It would. It would wear me out and I would. I would wear and I’m not kidding. I would go, I would tell Vanessa I have to go to sleep, so I would go into my closet on a Sunday at our house. We had a big house at 91st and Lynn Lane in broken arrow. People want a google search at big six thousand seven thousand square foot house.

I would just say I have to, I cannot handle it. And I would go into the closet and just sleep like a, not like a polar bear to kind of block it out, you know, because I was so appalled and so emotionally hurt by the bad review. Ken. And then on Monday when I would talk to my team of nine guys or 10 employees, I would sometimes take it out on them unintentionally, Z, you know, I’d bring that negativity into the meeting and as a leader it would set the wrong emotional tone. So what advice would you have for someone like myself at that time or the managers out there that sometimes will bring their personal issues that are personal struggles and they. And they were that, and they bring that into their interactions with their employees and their team members.

Well, the person will react to what’s going on with you because I think very often when we were out of control, it really is more about us than, than all. But one of the things that’s really interesting is it, you know, you might do a seminar and you’ll get tremendous feedback and there’ll be three negative. What do most people do? They focus on the negative,

right?

Uh, but, uh, what, what Rick taters and old colleague of mine said, feedback is the breakfast of champions, you know. And so if somebody has some negative comments, the big question is, is there anything I can learn about this or is it maybe something about them, you know, but, uh, uh, you know, what, what I think, you know, we talk about the power of catching people doing things right. We need to catch ourselves doing something right away. Most people beat themselves up more than anybody else, uh, in all. And so I think you just need to recognize that, that, uh, that you’re okay and what you can learn and not, you know, go in because God, I got a couple of negative feedback things. Well, hey, that’s life. You know, if everybody said you were great, that’s nice, but this may be some learning. And also some people might be bringing some garbage into the seminar themselves or the listening to your program,

your book, the one minute manager has sold many copies, many, many copies. How many copies do you estimate approximately that your book, the one minute manager has sold throughout the years?

I think 15 or 16 million or something like that.

Okay. So, which leads me into my next quote. Your quote was, people who feel good about themselves produce good results. Do you feel good about yourself, Ken? I mean, do you feel good knowing that you’ve sold 50 million copies? When did you go? I got a terrible author. When did it occur to you that people actually liked your book? At what point was it like a half a million? Was it seven copies? At what point were you going? Because I know what it feels like to write a book and go and does anybody. Is anybody going to like this book? Did you ever. I mean, when did you start to feel good about yourself as an author?

Well, it was amazing. We met in the first week in November in 1980. And uh, we had a draft ready as a woman at manager by the time we were going to the rose bowl at the end of December. And people really loved it and I said, expensive. We ought to go to New York and, you know, find a publisher. He just, no, he said they don’t know us, so they’ll beat us up and take all the money. He said love self publishing initially and build a track record. So we actually self published the one minute manager and a friend of mine was the executive director of the National Restaurant Association. So he led us keynote there and uh, we sold 1500 copies at the back of the room at the end of the session. I mean, people were diving in and saying, I want to order 100, send them here.

And he was, and uh, so, uh, we sold 20,000 copies with no advertising. So when we went to New York, we had endorsements from Corp presidents and all this kind of thing. And so they thought we were pretty good, you know, and uh, it was funny, uh, uh, we would go into publishers and someone would say, but you know, you’re charging 15, 95 for a little book that’s just too expensive, you know, so spencer would always get up and go to the door and they say, well, you’re going. He said, you know, if two unknown guys can sell $20,000 at that price and you can’t, this must be a little league outfit, you know.

So,

but, uh, the point is when it finally came out nationally, we were on the today show and Labor Day 1982 a and it went on the best seller list the next week and never left for, got a couple of years, you know. And so we got pretty good feedback even before publishing and nationally that people really liked it, you know. And, uh, so, uh, we thought, wow, people must like this style. So mean. Spencer followed up with who moved my cheese and only sold 25 million.

That book was, was required to read and a company I worked at called faith highway back in the day. I want to get your take on this, a z. can you share with Ken Blanchard you’re kind of connection to the, to the today show. My sister lives in Manhattan and she’s one of the producers of the today show. So she was, she wasn’t there in 1982. Oh, 92 now. Now. Now we have west Carter joining us, one of our incredible show sponsors west. Are you miked up over there? I believe so. Now, uh, Ken Blanchard, Wes, his company, winters and King, they represent some of the top literary minds in America, uh, throughout the history of winters. And King, correct me if I’m wrong, you guys have represented a Joel osteen. You guys represented td Jakes, Joyce Meyers, and now the pastor of the largest Protestant church in America. Craig Rochelle. What management questions?

A good friend of mine.

Really, you know Craig Rochelle?

I have a lead like Jesus Ministry that is all over the world and Greg has helped us with that and he’s quite a guy.

Wow. I want to ask you this here. Uh, uh, wes, uh, you know, you, you, you are a top attorney. We’re talking to one of the best selling authors in America here. What management questions would you have on behalf of the thrive nation or on behalf of yourself about management would you have for Mr Ken Blanchard?

I think one of the questions I would have, you know, coming in, I heard you talk about people who feel good about themselves produce good results. What are your thoughts on if you don’t feel good about yourself and the people who don’t take any active steps to fix that? I mean, you can’t just make things up to make yourself feel better. What? What’s your advice? Someone who’s down in the doldrums, they want to do the right thing, but they just haven’t quite taken any actions to get there.

Let me tell you, a lot of people use, people will feel good about themselves. Produce good results. Oh, we changed that to say, people who produce good results feel good about themselves,

so

if you want to feel good about themselves, help them produce, produce good results. Now, if somebody comes and has lousy feelings about themselves, you know, I think you can talk to them about it and say, you know, is there anything I help you seem to be down, but some people, if it’s a heavy duty, you need to get them to a professional that can, can deal with depression or for those kinds of things. I’d say the best way to make people feel good is to, for them to know that you want them to win. You want them to be successful and you’re not there to, you know, fold your arms and evaluate and then put everybody into a normal distribution curve. Uh, I’m on your team and the big question I’m going to constantly ask you is, how do I help? It’s really interesting. My daughter worked for Nordstrom’s when she was in college and when she first started there, she said to me, did, I got a really strange manager? And I said, what’s strange about him, Debbie? She said, well, about three or four times a day he’ll come up to me and say, Debbie, is there any way I can help you? She said, he acts like he works for me. He says he does push ups. It’s such a great store. You know.

So

yeah, I think that’s great advice. I mean everybody has out there our listeners, those negative personalities on the team that are always pessimistic about everything instead of looking at the upside. And I think that’s great advice that if you can help teach them how they can win, they can produce a, can help produce those positive feelings and positive vibe in the people you’re trying to get to produce for you.

Can I want to bring this up? The other day I went to a west, his office because I was dealing with a legal situation, a situation. And uh, at the, at the city plex towers, the way it works, there’s these. You can’t see what floor are you guys on it? The city flux towers were on the 59th floor. I can’t go up to your floor. Why the way you have the entire floor, I can’t go up to your floor unless you come down to greet me. Yes. A West is kind of a big deal here. Can, you know. So I, I go to the front desk, I talked to security west, comes down and great to me. I go up there and get a chance to uh, you know, ask West some questions and knock out some stuff, but the, the energy, the lady who greeted me was very positive.

Very Pot. See there’s, can you pick up on weird energy and positive energy? Yes. Um, and I, I really, I really do note winters and king. You guys do this. I know Dr z you do this, but can I want to ask you about this concept you’ve written about in your book you write help people reach their potential, catch them doing something right. I know winters and King, you’re big into praising your people Z. I know you’re big into praise and your people can make it practical for us. And then Z, I would like for you to one up Ken Blanchard. Mr Ken Blanchard. How do you help people reach their potential by catch them, by catching them doing something right? Give us some examples of how we can do that.

Well, I think one of the managers need to do is get out of their office, you know, and as I said earlier, we’re all good performance starts with clear goals. So you want to make sure that people have clear goals and observable and measurable and then once that is, you need to be constantly watching people’s performance and see if you can cheer them on, you know, and catch them doing something right. So often as I go around the world, I’ll ask people, how do you know whether you’re doing a good job? The number one response I get is nobody’s yelled at me lately. You know, no news is good news. And uh, so that’s just not the way you want. You want to spend a lot of time wandering around and see if you can accent the positive. And, and all. I remember I was with Don Soderquist who used to be vice chairman of Walmart and he picked me up.

We were going to speak together and he said, Mike, we stopped at this store. I haven’t been there in a long time, and he walked in and put his badge on, you know, and everybody knew he was vice chair and the manager came and he said to him, why don’t you take me around and appraising chore this, Show Me All the things that are going well around here and the people that are making this happen. I’d love to find that out and the manager look their wall. We went around and well, and what’s so interesting is at the end of that thing he said to him, God, this is great. Things are going well. Is there any issues or problems you have a did you think we incorporate, could help you on. And the guy was very honest on some things. What so often happens is when managers show up, everybody wants to hide any problems, you know, but if you, if they know you’re there to catch them doing something right and you’re on their side, they’ll also share with you issues that they need to work on and all. I just thought that was just a wonderful example of a great way to enter an organization.

I see you do this. My wife used to work with you in our work for you and she seen you do this. He’s talked about this. Can you talk about how you’re at your autumn? Optometry. I like your auto auction. How do you see 66 auto auction? How do you, uh, catch people doing something? Right? Well, it’s a beautiful. Can you say it so well? You first have the goal. So I have a meeting with my sales team. Yep. The guys out there hustling and I say, who are your top 10? Who’s your number one draft pick? Who’s the guy you’re going to after this week? What dealership? What auto place are you targeting? And then they tell me that it could be Xyz, right? Xyz, Xyz Motors. This justin just did. Um, and so then what I do is I follow up and I see Xyz at the sale now, right? Right. Selling cars and I beeline into that sales guy. And you get out your Air Horn and you. I give him a big hug. Do you typify carry an Air Horn or no? I, I don’t typically carry. Okay. I mean it was kind of weird. I didn’t want him to know I wanted to the west. We want. I’ll start carrying one. Okay. All right. I missed that. I missed that move. This kid’s book data book. Everything’s in the updated $60 million this. Now guess what? I’m going to bring another horn to praise. You’re 15 or 16 because I

like that move. I like to move. But uh, but anyway, um, it’s, it’s beautiful and whenever you go in and praise him, he just, it just with the fun part about it and can you know this and play, you know this and wes, you know this and everybody that owns a business noses, you just see them, they just swell up. I mean they just think about, you know, a few inches taller. I mean they just are the gleam in their eye and they, there’s just something very powerful

that somebody out there saying though. But Ken, I’m paying them right? And that reward enough. Break it down. Somebody out there saying that, you know, they’re saying that I pay them. That’s rewarding job,

that’s just crazy. You know, the great organizations that I’ve worked with to do well all think that their number one customers, they’re people. And so if they take care of their people, empower their people, praise their people, their people will go out of their way to take care of their number two customer, which is the people use your products and services, and then they’ll become raving fans of your organization, become part of your salesforce. And that’ll take care of the, uh, uh, the owners and the bottom line. But of the people who are problems as a manager, they’re always thinking about the bottom line or you know, I pay him to do this or I do, you know, and they’re not realizing they’re dealing with human beings. And without your people, you’re going to be nothing.

You have said you’ve written. That’s a minute I spend is the one I invest in people I’d love for you to, to, uh, share with us. What, what you mean by this enlightened. That’s the best minute I spend is the one I invest in people.

Well, it really gets it what I was just saying that the best managers realize that they can spend it where there their people, because if there are people that are going to accomplish the goals and so people are going to do things. I mean, if you think that, uh, you know, it’s going to be you and your brains or you didn’t do anything, you’re, you’re crazy mean. You can always tell these. You know, I’m, I’m doing a lot of work on servant leadership now and I see these self serving leaders who somehow think all the brains are in their office and as a customer, you know, you go to a, you have a problem, you go to a frontline employee, and rather than getting somebody that will solve it for you, they go, quack, quack. It’s our policy, quack, quack. I just work here. Quack, quack.

Do you want to talk to my supervisor? Quack? Or you’re talking to a duck pond, you know, because nobody wants to make a decision because they get in trouble. Uh, where if you, if you have a manager who turns the pyramid upside down when it comes to, to managing their people, uh, you’re going to be talking to eagles, you know, just like Nordstrom’s, you know, the person says, you know, I’ll take care of it. I had a friend a while back when to get some perfume for his wife at Nordstrom’s. And the woman said, I’m sorry we don’t sell that, a form of a perfume here, but I know where I can get it in the mall. How long are you going to be in the stories? They’re about a half hour sessions and fine, I’ll go get the perfume and bag, bring it back and gift wrapped. It blew his mind when he went back to him, when he’s leaving your store, the woman who left the store went and bought the perfume gift, wrapped it charged in the same price that she had paid the other store. And then the Nordstrom’s didn’t make any money, but what are they made? They made a customer plus that employee felt I’m pretty important. I can use my brains. Isn’t it great to be able to bring your brains to work

West quarter, be able to one up me on this question, so yes, you probably have a better question than I have, but I’m a can. I’ll ask you a question number one, and then West can ask you question number two, kind of piling onto this question, but you’ve written here, can you wrote, if you can’t tell me what you’d like to be happening, you don’t have a problem yet, you’re just complaining. A problem only exists exists. If there’s a difference between what is actually happening and what you desire to be happening, can you’re, you’re, you’re the great encourager. Talk to me about how we draw the line as a manager here, how do we know if someone’s complaining versus if somebody is actually looking for some improvement or how do you handle it when an employee just complaints?

Well, I think if you could just use that as the framework say, well tell me before we listened to the complaint, what is you? What do you want to be happening? And so what do you mean? I mean, what would be good behavior here at good performance here? Well Blah, blah, blah. Now will tell me what’s happening now. I assume that’s what you’re complaining about. Well, this is what. Okay, it’s the gap between what’s actually happening. Anyone that happened where the problem exists, you say, okay, now how are we going to close the gap? You know, because complaining is not going to do it. Let’s get into problem solving and I think you get them off of it when you sort of say, well, you know, what would you like to be happening? You know, a complaining doesn’t. This isn’t the complaining department, this is a problem solving department.

Can you. You have so many knowledge bombs per capita west. You manage a team of people. I’m sure you’ve never had a member of your team complain in a vague esoteric way where they’re not actually wanting to improve anything. They’re just wanting to complain. What question do you have for Mr Ken Blanchard? How to deal with complaints.

I got a selfish question here. Can Not so much about the employees, but the middle management that you know in my office, it’s associate attorneys or you know, it’s your middle manager, they’re complaining about the staff underneath them and as a manager, you know you have in clay and z are great at this. I’m setting goals, expectations, so you, your employees know what they have to live up to, what you expect, the accountability. How do you drill that in? Teach that to your middle managers that when they come to you and complain, Oh, so and so’s not very productive, or they’re not doing it right, but then you drill down and you find out you haven’t explained to them well how to do it in the first place. What your expectations are. There’s no accountability. Do you have any advice for our listeners? How you build that, teach that to your middle management? Good.

That’s where we give them a copy of the one minute manager.

That’s why that thing was so popular, you know, because when you really think about it here, you’re managing people, somebody’s complaining. You say, well, are the goals clear? Okay, well probably we’re going to deal with that first, you know, and they say, Oh yeah, the goals are clear, but uh, well tell me, what are you spending most of your time? Are you catching people doing things right or doing things wrong? Well, you know what I mean and you know, and uh, if somebody makes a mistake, how do you deal with it, you know, do you lose your temper or do you see how you could help him? You know, and I think you asked all those questions around that. It really, really helps and it, it just, you have to stay calm as a manager because she kinda have a lot of interesting people around and you want to constantly say, okay, uh, how can I help you be better so you can help your people be better. And uh, you know, so complaining is the deal and your people killing it all bad because you know, who hired him.

That’s a great point. It sounds like what I need to do is just go buy a bunch of copies of the one minute manager and have a lunch.

I’m going to ask you this, how many copies, how many copies of the one minute manager have you sold throughout the years do you think?

Well, we got a new one minute manager that came out recently and that’s really doing really well, but I think it’s 15, 16 million copies overall, I think.

Let’s just say it was $15 million. Let’s be conservative.

I’ll tell you an interesting thing. I had a young guy come up to me in the seminar I was doing. He said, can you’ll get a kick out of this? My grandfather gave my father the one minute manager when he started his first job as a manager and my father gave me the one minute manager when I started my first job, you know, so here’s a couple of generations, you know, because you know I was 19, 82 and it’s a, it’s a few years. It’s really amazing that a book that came out, you know, 30, you know,

everyone needs to buy the book. Everyone needs to get a copy of the book and the book, I mean, can you can just tell the listeners out there who are not familiar with the book, people who live under a, they’re not familiar with the book. This is the book that was recommended to me personally by Mr Chet, the CEO and chairman of Kwik trip, a billion dollar company. What other companies have hired you to speak throughout the years? Just Kinda, you know, just give us some name drops here. No, not that you’re a name dropper, but I want you to name drop. What are some companies that have hired you to speak on management over the years

in the grocery business? Disney or southwest Nordstrom’s. Uh, you know, just a lot of. We’ve done a lot of work with American Express, you know, and you know, just, you know, the, the companies that are doing pretty well for the best customers because they want to get even better. The people aren’t doing well. They want to be hiding under a rock.

You said you’ve spoken for a, you’ve been asked to speak and coach and to teach up to train up Disney Z. Have you heard of Disney? Sounds like a mouse. I think mouth. Whereas if you ever heard of southwest airlines, a taxi company, Andrew Show Observer, taking notes today. Nordstrom’s even heard of that company. Definitely been there. Uh, you’re ruining the whole vibe in American Express. No. No other company that you have spoken to over the years there, Ken Blanchard, where you’d say, okay, that’s a company everybody would know because I am a huge believer in what you’re teaching. And Your Book is just the Gospel for management. What’s, what’s a couple other companies you’ve spoken to there? And there’ll be a big companies that people would know out there.

Oh,

going to put you on the spot. Zero.

IBM, Ibm. These are all at different times.

Ah, so Yoda of, of business management. But yet you’ve looked like luke skywalker.

Well, it’s really been, uh, been been fun. You know, and I think the fact that what I write about and teach is common sense organized. So it’s not complicated and people really appreciate that and they, they can get excited and sharing. So I’ve written a lot of parables and in all by my editor just said, I just, uh, just finished my 70th book.

Wow.

Seventieth. And so publishers say, well, you ought to read only one book every three or four years so we can publish that. And I said, I’m not writing for you. I’m writing for because it’s fun.

We go, you are, you are a best selling author and an author that pumps out content like people would not believe, but one of the powerful quotes you’ve written over the years, which I’ve, it’s resonated with me and I want to get your take on it. Then I want to get into Dr c dot kind of pile on with a question for you about this

is feedback is the breakfast of champions. Again, feedback is the breakfast of champions. Ken, why is this such a powerful concept for all our listeners to understand

trying out for the Olympics and high jump and then nobody will tell them how, how high they jumped, you know, a champion. Imagine if you went bowling and they get, you know, you know, the curtain in front of the pins and you can hear it crack, but you don’t know how many you’re knocked down, you know what I mean? How long are you going to want a bowl, you know, and uh, so I think it’s what really keeps people going because they get a sense of how well they’re doing and can they get better and, and all that kind of thing. So I think it just, uh, it’s so, uh, so, such a powerful, simple concept that, that, that people just love feedback, you know, and, and if it’s negative feedback and if you’re not punishing them, it’s a redirection. You’re saying, okay, how can we get back in shape?

And when they start to get it back in shape, then you can catch them doing something right again, you know. And uh, so, uh, feedback is just a really important to, you know, I think it’s a really, is, it’s a uh, and uh, you know, sometimes when you’re learning things you don’t want a lot of feedback. You know, like I had a, I had a golf university, you know, and so a lot of times with beginners we would have them hit into a net and they said, why do you have his head into your net because you’re learning and if we had you out there, the t and you kept on dribbling things and all that kind of thing, you start to feel lousy, you know, so we want to make sure we got the skills before we get you out there for feedback. So you know, people need training first before you throw them out on the job and given feedback.

There’s it new sheriff in town, it’s called the Internet troll, the Internet troll, the Internet troll who, and I completely agree with what you’re saying and I guess what I’m, what I’m, my question really kind of kind of spills around this idea that someone now can get online and say whatever they want to say, whether you know, they could be, they could have their own nefarious reasons for doing it. You may or may not figure that out. You may not even care at some point, but this idea that people come on and they rate you, they talk about you. Did you say rape? It feels like that’s a t, not just saying how at all, as a business about Peter. Tom, sorry, back to you, right? Yes. Sorry, I didn’t pronounce it. Sorry. I’m sorry to say how I feel. I’m projecting on you. So anyway, they get on and

they can say whatever they want to say and get whatever star rating they want to give anonymously. I mean this is sweet tiger at Yahoo Dot com or whatever. And, and uh, you know, I, I know feedback’s very important, but where do you draw the line? I mean because this new day and age of this anonymous of I can get on, I can, it can be a competitor, it could be a employment person to be an employee. You fired if you smell something

who loves where I recently can. I had an employee who loved working for us and their spouse wrote a bad review. True Story. Yeah. So Ken Blanchard, where do you, where do you draw the line? Because I know some criticism and if people don’t identify who they are, that’s a good word. There you go.

No, they don’t want a dialogue, you know, and uh, so, but if, if people are giving you feedback because they want to help you, that’s really good. If they’re just, uh, you know, trying to get at, you know, again, that has more to say about them that it has.

That’s good word. People need to hear that because there’s so many guys out there that get that bad review. They get that from this anonymous, you know, a person and they don’t want the dialogue and they’re not there to be helpful. They’re there just to be mean for whatever reason that that’s on them. You’re right. And so it is the ability to shake that off and not worry about that and let that go, I think is one of the things

I’m looking at your book right now. I’m pulling it up right now. Now this is what I’m going to. I can’t on. If you get on Amazon lately, Ken,

excuse me,

have you been onto Amazon.com lately to look at your book reviews? Have you done this recently?

No, I haven’t.

Okay. I’m going to pull it up. I’m going to pull it up real quick here and this is this. See, this is the kind of candor we get on this show. We don’t get anywhere else here. The book right now has as a rating that’s just a little bit under five. Can you have a 487 reviews? That’s good. Now every single person I know who’s worth a million dollars has told me the one minute manager is hot. It is great. It is good. It is helpful. You should buy the book, but Ken, you’ve got some people out there that you know you have a four point six, four point eight, whatever score. How? Where do you draw the line when it comes to processing the reviews about your book? Because you’re close to a five, but it appears as though you’re not pleasing everybody.

Four point five is a pretty good score. You know what I mean? If you get more people saying you’re doing well, then the not and well that’s, that’s good. And uh, you know, I think you got to be your own best friend, you know, and uh, if you get negative reviews, you can say, God, I wonder wrong with that poor person.

Oh Great. I am, you know,

I’m just saying, you know, you can just go some, some people that you know, but it depends on your upbringing. You know, a lot of kids got, all they got was caught doing things wrong and not right. I kept to be in a family where I was caught doing things right all the time and cheered and cheered on by my mother, father. And so, uh, you know, I, I liked that and I’m, I’m, I’m absolutely open to learn. If somebody has some good feedback for me and I have learned, I tell you one of the things that, the reason why I think our books are good as a dispensary, my started a processed together is that when we write a book and we feel good about it, we first give a draft to people close to us. We have a form that says, what did you like best about it?

Oh, what do you think could be changed that make it the best book? What’s the best title for this book? The two joint. And, and so we give it to people and get feedback. Then we look at the feedback and decide which ones we really think makes sense. We go, we use the [inaudible] factor, you know, Mahal, we should’ve thought of that. And then we rewrite that and then we give it to a bigger circle of people and we get feedback and then we give it the bigger. About the third or fourth time we spent a summer in upstate New York on Skinny Atlas Lake. And we belong a little country club there, which is really fun because it’s got ge executives and farmers and all. And so what I’ll do is I’ll put a notice in the newsletter. I got a new book coming out. Uh, if you’d like to pick up a copy of the manager’s office, the draft copy and read it and fill out the feedback form and come so and so night, I’ll buy you dinner.

Uh, to get your feedback and I’ll usually get 50 or 60 people to come to dinner. And uh, uh, what I do is that during, while the regenerate said your job at your table is to agree on three things you really like about the book, three things that you think should be changed about it to make it better and the best title. And then I go around after dinner with a microphone and people, uh, reported out. I remember I wrote a book with Norman Vincent Peale, you know, the old positive thinking guy. And he had started his ministry in Syracuse right near where we live. And so I, I told the people that normally and I had written this book, the power of ethical management, we want to give feedback and 300 people showed up, you know? And so I went around and gathered all the feedback and then I asked Norman to get up and, and talk to the group. But he said, I’ve never been to a free for all like this in my life.

He said, I’ve written, yeah,

30 books. And when I finished one, my wife Ruth and I pray, he said, Ken Blanchard doesn’t trust that process.

I love the analogy you made a little bit earlier about your family and feedback and catching them doing positive things. And it makes me wonder. So the more you catch people doing the right thing, right? Do you think they received the feedback better as opposed to just coming with the feedback and not enough of the. Catching them with the positives?

Yes. I think the feedback is, you know, a human relations is like, you know, money, you know, um, water in a, in a bank or something like that. You know, that anytime you give negative feedback, I don’t care how good a relationship you’re taking something from your account, but if you got nothing in the bank then you better have a mask and a gun, you know. And so I always say that, uh, you know, you need to catch people at least four times as many positive things as negative things. You know,

Ken, real quick, that is huge. You said you said that you better give people how many times more positive feedback than negative football was the number you just said it.

Forty one. Yeah,

four to one and I agree with that. Zee. Zee, you manage hundreds of employees. Do you agree with that? I hadn’t really thought about it breaking down that much, but it seems like the CEO, the more you I, I agree with white had more. Yeah. The more you can encourage more because you know you, whether you are you leading by a carrot or a stick. I just think that’s a big idea, Ken. I mean you’re talking about you want to praise people, catch them doing the right thing. Where are people getting that wrong? And that is, that is powerful.

If you do that, then you got money in your account, you know, and like my wife and I’ve done a lot of stuff with, with marriage, you know, in the last number of years, you know, because it’s really sad about it. But what happens in marriage is when you’re courting, everything is right. You know, you’re just catching each other, you know, and then all of a sudden you get married, you move in with music. What the hell is that? You gotta be kidding me. You know what happens is you start a accenting the negative and people tell me, uh, you know, how can you turn your marriage around? You know, you’ll start accenting the positive more than the negative. You know, what, what, what is your fall in love with? How can you reinforce that? Things would be the reason people don’t want to go home is why do you want to go home and get grief all the time, you know? And so he love to get them when you get caught doing things right and, and somebody is happy to see you and all that. And that’s the same way in organizations. You know, we have a hiring philosophy here that if you hire somebody and they come through the front door the first day on the job and when you see them, you don’t feel a chemical difference in your body because you’re excited to see him. Why did you hire him? There’s enough jerks in the world. We don’t need to work in here.

You have a notable quotable that I know my partner in Crime Dr Robert Zellner would a hundred percent agree with. I’m going to read it to you. I’d like for you to break it down. I know you’re familiar with it, but I want to build a pile on with some questions about this because nobody lives in. Believes this quote more than you and Dr Zellner you wrote, there was a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something you accept. No excuses, only results. Ken Blanchard, what do you mean by this?

Well, it’s really is a lot to say about your performance and all that. You know, a lot of people, you know, they got so frustrated with my golf game. I said, well, do you ever practice? Well, you know what I mean, so you know, if you’re interested in golf, that’s fine, but you know, go out and play NATO golf which is not attached to outcome, you know, but if you’re committed and you really want to get better, then what are you doing about it? You need to practice and commitment is really an important thing that you want from your people and all. You want them to be committed to be high performers if they’re only interested in their, in the probably in the wrong job. And so it’s really interesting to take a look at a data issue, analyzed, you know, your own thing, you know, what, what are you really committed to do and what are you just interested in doing it and spend your time on the things you’re really committed to do because that’s the way you perform the best.

It seems like more and more people are just interested you. It’s hard to find more people that are committed, especially when you get down to employees. And how do you feel like as a manager you can help those employees be more committed? I mean, they’re punching the time clock, they’ve got a job, it’s just a job to them. I mean, you know, Forbes and everybody says, yeah, there’s, what’s 70 percent of the people don’t like just to be there, you know, they’re just, they’re the only interest is, is that their paycheck going to be there in two weeks and it’s not going to bounce. Right. And can they get through the day? I mean, you walk in a, we having for lunch, what are we having for lunch? What time is it? Because I get out of here at five. So I mean, what time is it? So how, how do you teach management skills to try to get people more, a little more committed verse interested in what they’re doing for you?

Well, I think the biggest is to look at your people as your, your business partner on, to recognize that uh, none of us are. One of our favorite sayings is none of us is as smart as all of us, you know. And so if, if we have a problem we go to are people, you know, for example, uh, in 2008, you know, when we had the economic downturn, it all looked like we were going to be down about 20 to 25 percent of our projected sales. And so what we do once a quarter, we meet with all of our people in our company and we shared the, uh, you know, the books with them, you know, here, here’s how we’re performing, here’s what we do. So, uh, we were going to celebrate our 30th anniversary. And uh, we brought, it was a two day thing at the hotel del Coronado is a wonderful place.

But the first day we brought an outside consultant and we divided all of our people. We have over 300, uh, into groups of six, you know, six to eight people at a table. And after the groups we said, okay, here’s the data. It looks like, you know, we’re going to be down this much. And, and, you know, a lot of people say, well, you know, okay, let’s downside of this. Get rid of a whole bunch of people. What we’d rather do is find out from you what suggestions do you have? One half of the room on how we can cut costs and the other side of the room, what’s ways that we can increased revenue. And it was just amazing the stuff that came out of the people, including in. Why don’t we all take salary cuts, you know, uh, the higher salary to people take more of a cut when we stopped paying off, you know, you know, are a retirement thing for awhile. Why don’t we do this and that at all. And it was really interesting. At the end of the year, we didn’t make any profit, but we didn’t lose any money. Uh, because everybody pitched in, you know, it took some of the hidden all rather than saying, let’s downsize everybody in. And we said, you know, if we can get turned around and get this thing off, we’ll take everybody on why. And when we finally turned it around completely two years, we took, you know, 300 people to ally.

That’s awesome.

Went to Maui. But the big thing, that thing thing is, uh, your people know where you know, and, and people are committed to work for an organism when they think that they’re important.

I want to a kid. I’m so sorry. I want to ask you a couple questions here. The hotel del Coronado, west Carter. Have you been there before z? If you’ve been there. Sounds Fun. I can say it is one of the nicest hotels I’ve ever stayed at. I’ve spoken there. Yes. It’s a very nice hotel. Great Hotel. Can you talk to me, you, you said you, you reward your team by

taking them to Hawaii. You also said that you had a consultant come in and speak to you and you had the event at the hotel del Coronado. Why did you, why are you hosting your event at the hotel del Coronado? And why are you taking people to Hawaii and not taking them to a local days in or a, an affordable motel? 60 six. I mean, why are you taking people to these nice venues?

Well, we do it based on pitching in and we’re doing well. We want to share it, you know, and uh, so uh, I think the most important thing that people look at the top managers is that they is this a bank that they’re just trying to make all the money in, you know, I mean, we had a gallery ran for president for governor in California and she was really bright and involved so people found out that, uh, in a tough economic times and she took a 20, you know, $20, million dollar bonus and laid off 1500 people, you know.

Yeah.

Kind of deal is that, you know, and uh, so uh, you know, uh, so we, we kinda share with, with people.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to speak over there. One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that as we reward employees, sometimes, you know, we’re trying to do what you’re talking about. We share in the good times. We try to, you know, financially incentivize us when everybody’s performing well. Sometimes, sometimes employees start to take these things for granted and see that as a new baseline. Do you have any ideas? You have you, have you seen that happen? Any suggestions how to just keep the employees aware that these are bonuses? This is us trying to do the right thing. Not every year from now on, we’re going to be able to do this.

Well, I think that’s why you want to keep your people informed. You know, that’s why we opened the books once a quarter so they know how well we’re doing and what we’re, what we need to do and, and all that kind of thing. So when we all of a sudden look at it and compare the figures, but during that year and the year before, what have you. And we say, well we really hit a home run so let’s celebrate, you know, but if, if we’re having a tough time, then we say, okay, how can we all dig in and help you know and get, get up, get to the other side so we can get back to celebrating. So you, you want to make sure that everybody knows it’s that a. sure we love you all and we want this to be a great place. But, but we, it’s not a country club. We’re trying to run a business too. So, uh, we need to say how can we help, uh, and all but, but we, we use the brains of our people not just depend on our selves to figure everything out.

10 once written, uh, you, you wrote here, we can’t always control what happens in our lives. Things will go well, things will go poorly, but we can control our response to those events. Talking to the listeners out there about the importance of embracing and understanding that, that, that stoic philosophy that we cannot always control what happens in our lives, where the things will go well, but we can control our response to those events.

Well, it’s interesting. We’ve been doing a fair amount of work with first tee, you know, and they work with urban kids using golf to teach about character and life and all. See, because golf spells game of life first. And it’s a wonderful laboratory because if you’ve ever played golf, sometimes you get good breaks. You don’t deserve. Sometimes you get good breaks, you do deserve. Sometimes you get bad breaks. You don’t deserve, sometimes you get bad breaks, you do deserve, sometimes you’re playing better than you should and you need to deal with success. Sometimes you’re dealing playing worse than you should, and you got to deal with failure all in four and a half hours, you know, and I think that’s the way life is, you know, is it that, uh, you got to really roll with the, with the, with the punches and realize, okay, you know, this isn’t a, this isn’t going quite as well, and what can I learn from it? What can we do to turn it around and all. And so, uh, uh, but if you get beaten down, uh, and, and uh, down on things, then you’re not going to be very happy in your life. You know, you gotta rally got to learn how to deal with adversity and uh, make sure you embrace adversity as an opportunity to see what we can do to turn it around.

You wrote in one of your books, he wrote, the best way to teach people is by telling a story. And Dr Zellner is perhaps one of the best business storytellers. I know he has a way of communicating an idea with the team in a way where everybody, I mean, this people run around and your company’s Z, they say, what would z do? And they have like a story that goes with it. So you have a certain principle you teach. There’s a story that has resonated and I want to start with you can, I want to go to z here for the followup piggyback one upsmanship question. Uh, can you sit here again? The best way to teach people is by telling a story. What do you mean by that and why does that work so well?

Well, my father retired as an admiral in the navy and he taught me that early. He said, what you need, if you want to be a good speaker is make a point. Tell a story, make a point, tell a story. There’s nothing worse than some dry person up front who’s just given one concept after another concept, after another concept. So people really resonate and learn from stories. I mean, who was the one of the greatest storytellers of all time? Jesus, you know, somebody asked him, he’d say, let me tell you a story. And uh, and uh, so, uh, but, uh, I think people really identify with stories. I think that’s why the, you know, with the one minute manager and somebody these other books, you know, knows a story about a young man searching for effective manager, you know, because he wanted to work for one, wanted to be one, you know, people say, well, I like to get into that, you know, and uh, so how, how do you, how do you, uh, create a story because that’s where people learn the best, I think is through stories. You know. I mean, we were down at the World War Z, I’m in New Orleans, is last week. We’re doing a collaborative relationship with them, but they had a whole exhibit on Bob Hope, you know, and, uh, I mean he was such an amazing guy with the military going behind lines during the war and doing everything. And, uh, he just, you know, made them laugh through stories and he would make points by the, by telling stories, you know, it’s just a wonderful way to learn

great management and great managers. And how for people to be better managers, how do you teach someone to be a better storyteller?

Well, I think you got to ask them, you know, well, you know, how did you learn such and such, you know, what’s the story, you know, um, who impacted your life the most? What did they do have that impacted that, you know, start to ask them about their lives because our lives are a story. And um, I think that it’s really interesting that a lot of the best speakers are also vulnerable because they laugh at themselves.

Yes. I mean, I tell a lot of stories about myself,

Barrett who took over as president of southwest after her Keller stepped down. She said, people love your, uh, admire your skills, but they love your vulnerability. You know, when you can laugh at yourself or say, you know, uh, Gary, Richard W 40 said the most important thing, a sentence I learned to be an assistant manager is to say to my people, you know what? I’m not sure what we ought to do. What do you think?

You don’t think that your allows you manage yourself belonging.

Where do you live now? Geographically speaking? Where do you call home?

We’re in San Diego.

Uh, my wife grew up in San Diego, California and she had a lot of family in El cahone out there. Do you ever come to Tulsa, Oklahoma?

Yes. Uh, one of our best, uh, uh, lived there for years. A Pete, Nancy, mine again, and I’m a fellow. Took over or Robert says president was a buddy of ours. Do when he turned it around. When the son of a screwing it up.

Well, I know it’s probably short notice, but if you want to come out this Friday, we’re having a. was it a kin Schmidt? The guy who did the Harley Davidson turned around. He’s going to a conference on Friday. We have my Michael Levine, the PR consultant for Nike, for prints for Michael Jackson. He’s going to be coming and speaking. What are you going to attend the workshop? I am trying to move my schedule around just so I can be there. It’s going to be a big thing. So again, a kid. If you’re ever in the Tulsa area, especially this Friday, we’d love to have you.

We’re teaching our course at the University of San Diego.

I respect, I respect that kind of rejection, but this is where I want to ask you here is people will come up during the conference all the time and they say, clay, I heard at a conference that you said or on a radio show where I heard a friend of mine told me you took your act three times and Algebra three times. Is that true? I said, well, yeah, I did. I mean, it said, why three? I’m like, I dunno. I just kept taking it and I finally got a high enough score to get into. Or you or Roberts University on my third attempt a Algebra. I’m not kidding. My teacher, Mrs Gal, she pulled me aside and she said, if I don’t give you a certain grade, you can’t graduate, so just do your best and I’ll do my part. We’ll get you through this. And I mean this.

I mean, but there’s certainly the third time’s the, the, you know, but people sometimes feel like that when they come to the conference date and then they asked that I haven’t asked that, you know, hundreds of times people seem to connect with me more, you know, or when they meet my wife and they go, wow, she’s a beautiful and they meet me and they go, ew or gross. I think some people relate more when they realize that when he and I are being self deprecating, we’re not just making this up. When they realize that you guys are deeply flawed humans who happen to be good at one thing, we’re not perfect. You know, we’re good at this and that, but we’re not good at everything. You know, we were all. We all fall short of the glory of God. Why does self deprecation work so well and in your mind?

Well, I think it brings everybody down to a level that you’re not up there telling us how great you are, you know, and uh, uh, I wrote a book, the follow up book called the one minute apology and we changed the name to the four secret, but, uh, I think that people really admire your vulnerability, particularly if you apologize, you know, and say you made a mistake. I mean, the thing that’s so sad about some of the Washington folks, you know, they would never admit they made a mistake, uh, like, you know, uh, Bob, you know, ted Kennedy, what did he say? The problem with the Bay of Pigs, it was my fault. Don’t blame anybody else. I mean, how many other people have actually said that and said, we made a mistake, you know, and, uh, we’re not perfect. All of us. I mean, I, I married way above myself, which really helps me with having margin in my life

that’s been married. How long have you guys been together?

Oh, 56 years.

So we’re just getting used you. Congratulations, by the way, sir. Congratulations there. And by the way, I know she’s trying to make out with you during the show, so I know we’ve got limited time here, but here’s my question for you. You wrote here, you said you said effective managers manage themselves and the people they work with so that both the organization and the people profit from their presence. What do you mean by that?

Well, it’s really interesting. We think that the effective leadership is this transformational journey and it starts with yourself. All the managers I have felt and leaders who have a problem are scared little kids inside. You know, Thomas Harris years ago wrote a book. Well I’m okay. You’re okay. So the worst life position is, I’m okay. You’re not in all the research showed that they were really covering up not okay. Feelings about themselves. Uh, and so like in our graduate program we start with the self and help people develop their own mission statement, look at, look at their personality, look at their strengths and their weaknesses. How can they gather people around them to, to build on them. And then we moved to one on one leadership, which is how do you build a trusting relationship with somebody? Then we moved to team leadership when you’re trying to develop a community. And then finally, organizational leadership, which is now you’re trying to build a culture and those, those themes run out this program. And then the University of San Diego Faculty teach the accounting in the marketing and the finance and all of those kinds of things. But a self knowledge, uh, is really important and feeling comfortable about who you are. Uh, because none of us is perfect. That’s, that’s for sure. We all got strengths and weaknesses in the greatest leaders, uh, gather people around them who cover their weaknesses. You know,

you know, if you have a whole bunch of people gathered around you that are all like you, that a lot of you aren’t necessary.

Okay? I have a question. I know west wants to pile on here. You have a notable quotable you wrote when people don’t know what’s going on, it’s human nature for them to imagine a version that’s 10 times worse than the truth. As an example, just today I was talking to a member of our team about how a certain aspect of their performance was not up to par and I’m telling you what Tim can. You said if we praise people, you know, four times, we haven’t you. If you make four love bank deposits, maybe we can do one withdrawal and I think Joanne was present, but I was like, hey, we need to improve this aspect of what you’re doing. And right away somebody heard the buzzword. They’re like, what are we talking about here? Or are we talking because they heard something related to what they’re doing and they were all of a sudden concerned like, oh my gosh, there’s my department doing a bad job.

Are we doing a bad job? Is the band doing a bad job? Oh No. And I had to over communicate, you know, are you doing good? You’re doing great and here’s what I was talking about because Kent curiosity will kill the cat. And for a lot of employees, when they don’t know what’s going on, if they hear, like, if they hear me say, Hey Sharon, I need to get your updated social security number, your correct social security number, so I can pay you this week on time. Somebody will hear from a distance they’re going, I don’t think they can pass on time. I think they’re run out of money. I think the company’s going bankrupt. What are we going to do? And the people in their mind, it becomes exponential. Can, can you, can you please explain why you’ve seen this to be true over and over again when people don’t know what’s going on, it’s human nature for them to imagine a version that’s 10 times worse than the truth.

So you want to keep people informed all the time because their imagination is a lot worse than reality, that’s for sure. And uh, so, uh, his key people up to date and then they will be trying to guess what’s going on. And uh,

I love this quote because I think that this is one of the things I try to preach to my clients. I work with a lot of churches and anytime something happens in a church, you know, the worship leader all of a sudden is not there or you know, anything happens. I see this in congregations over and over where the story gets up and it’s always worse than the truth. So, in, in the office, I guess my question, um, when you’re dealing with employees and sensitive issues, is there a line somewhere there, I mean, how do you communicate to your staff? So-And-So is not going to be here for awhile. If they’re dealing with a sensitive personal issue or something they’ve asked you to keep private. Is there a way to handle that situation when you can’t overcommunicate like you want to, but at the same time you don’t want people to just making stuff up

but so and so’s going to be leaving. And so we really wish them the very best, you know, and some of you might ask why they’re leaving. Well, it’s uh, you know, it’s between us and them and, and, you know, but you can certainly ask them, but, uh, uh, we wish them the best and, you know, do your, do your best. You can’t always relate it, you know, share sensitive stuff with everybody, but be as open with people as you possibly can be.

Okay. I have a question now. I know you have a better question, so I’m going to go first. I’ll give you a soft question here. Can you wrote unexpressed thoughts? Don’t mean squat, kind of a softer question. Unexpressed thoughts don’t mean squat. What do you mean by that?

Well, if you get a feeling about something and you don’t express it, well, don’t expect anybody to help you solve it. So I don’t know what mean squat, you know, unless you get them out there and say, you know, I’ve got a concern about this. So like the Dorky about it. And um, again, uh, he can’t overcommunicate Oh, no matter where you are, if you’ve got a concern, get it out, uh, and don’t keep it inside. And uh, and then ended up, you know, a lot, a lot of people in organizations that have quit and stayed, you know, mentally they’ve dropped out.

That’s nice. People who have the courage to quit. I’m mentally but not so much the courage to quit actually in. And so they continue to show up getting a paycheck, but they mentally have given up on the situation. That is a profound observation. Seeing so many people out there like that. Two part question. The second one is really hard hitting, but the first one’s kind of a light kind of fluff offer. Okay, nice. What are your quotes? Is the key to successful leadership is influence, not authority. How could that be? Could you give a banders authority? Right. You give them and you give them authority. You say, Hey, you’ve got the authority to make changes, to do this, to correct, to inspired, uh, you know, hey, you know, pop up, but also make sure they’re doing the right thing. I mean, all that stuff. And so what do you mean by the influence over authority? Duck about that a little bit.

Top down hierarchy. You know, what you’re trying to do is influenced people. You’re trying to motivate them, trying to create an environment that they’re excited about and that’s a lot better than in my way or the highway, you know, and um, it’s all from the top down. And in my father I told you it was an admiral in navy and he says, a misconception that in the military, it’s all my way or the highway. He said, you know, he said I would have been nothing without my chiefs, you know. And he said, if you acted like a really big deal and you went into battle, you’re managed Sushi before the enemy.

You said not as

good as your people. You know, I never forget I wasn’t the president of the seventh and nourish Shell New York. And I come home and I’m all proud and uh, telling my dad and my dad said, well, Ken Blanchard, this might be the beginning of your leadership training. He said, now you’re president, don’t ever use your position because great leaders are great because people trust and respect them not because they have power

real quick before you paint can. And do a corner with a hard hitting question. I have an audio clip I like to play on behalf of the tribe nation.

Oh,

okay. Now you can ask. And he’s like, why would you paint them into a corner with this kind of question or the world wants to know, especially thrive nation. Why did you, how could you let the chargers leave? San Diego? I’m being blunt.

We just had a self oriented owner. Just really kind of ridiculous. And I’m, I’m, I can’t understand why the national football league will let that happen. They’ve been here for over 50 years and to send them up to la where there’s another team and they’re not, they’re not getting much crowds up there were playing better football overall. A little wake up beat pretty good by Pittsburgh. Um, but it’s, it’s a, it’s strange. You know, I, I really gave up on some of that ownership stuff. I grew up in New York and the Brooklyn dodgers, they were everything to the people in Brooklyn when, when, uh, when they o’malley took them to la, that was the end. I would never root for the Los Angeles dodgers if my life depended on it because how could you take them away from, from Brooklyn, you know,

can, I have two final questions for you on, on football related questions here? Um, you have had a lot of success during your career. Um, I believe that for a myriad of reasons, but one is the consistent diligent application of effort. I would like to know how do you structure the tip of the first four hours of your day? Typically in where are you physically when you are organizing the first four hours of your day? Or how do you, what, what, what, what do the first four hours of your day look like?

Well, one of the things when I wrote a book with Norman Vincent Peale, we decided that we all have two cells. We have an external task oriented, self disuse of getting jobs done and we have a thoughtful reflective self and the problem in the morning. Which self do you think wakes up the quickest? It’s the external task race because what the alarm goes off. And John Ortberg, who’s a wonderful pastor friend of mine, he said, well, why isn’t it called the happiness a clock? Or it’s going to be a great day clock, no alarm, you know,

and people that

and they’re trying to eat while they’re washing, and then they jump in their car and they’re racing here and there and all around, and they might get home at seven or eight at night and they fall into bed and they’re absolutely exhausted. No human energy say good today. But he was laying next to me. Next day, they’re out of there again. And pretty soon they’re quoting a rat race. And the Great Hollywood philosopher Lily Talmud said, the problem with the rat race is even if you win it, you’re still a rat.

So

what are the things I try to do is enter my day slowly, you know? And so I got a fabulous dog by the name of joy. And I named a joy because Fred Smith, who wrote to you and your network of Great Texas Christian businessman who died a few years ago, said that real joy in life was when you get in the act of forgetfulness about yourself. And if you want to forget about yourself, get a dog, you know, because a joy I could care less than I’m going to be home late because you guys are keeping me on here so long. But when I get home she’s going to go, oh, you know, and uh, so I take her out first and, and feed her. And then I, I like to do some spiritual reading. I read the daily word that my parents gave me since I was 10. I like to read Jesus calling and do things and just get my mind and I like to try to think of the day and what’s happening in the day.

How do I want to be seen in the day and all that, you know. And so, uh, I tried to enter my day slowly and in terms of writing, I do my best writing in the early in the morning, you know, and so, uh, after I enter my day slowly than I think about writing and then I like to come into the office, you know, and see people and have fun and all that kind of thing too. But I think it’s really interesting to, for people to look at their first two or three hours and what they do and how quickly they get into their task oriented itself or race around and all. So

this has been the longest, a 10 minute interview have your license. I want to ask you, your next 12 months, what’s the big project you’re working on? What’s the big thing you want to promote? Because our thrive nation is very action orientated. These, these, these people want to take action. They want to, they want to get things done. And uh, wha what is there a, is there a certain book out there that you’ve released recently? Do you want the thrive nation to check out? Is there a certain website? What is the action step that you would recommend for all of the thrive nation to take and my friend you have as long as you want here to, to share this?

Well, I wrote my biggest project about a year or so ago called servant leadership in action. You know, what I normally write parables, but I think the world is in desperate need of a different leadership role model. We’ve seen what self serving leaders have done in every sector of society in Washington is to complete self serving system. And so I got 44 people to write short articles about what they thought about servant leadership. And, and I didn’t want any artist will be more than about six pages, but I got people like Marshall Goldsmith and, and uh, uh, Simon Sinek and Brenae Brown and Francis Hustle bomb and Patrick Lencioni and, and Greg Rochelle wrote an article for me and just a whole bunch of people, but you know, some faith based people from not. And, and, um, so that’s a book that I really want to push out there because I think people could really get a sense of a, of a different thing.

And then we just finished a summary of what we’ve been teaching at our company for years, the third edition of leading at a higher level. So these were two books where I had a lot of coauthors, I’m writing articles in them, but I just want to get people to start thinking about leadership at a higher level and looking at is serving rather than being served and seeing how we can make a difference up out there. And so, uh, when we were down at the World War Two museum, you know, trump says he wants to make America great again. I tell you the greatest time probably we used in the second world war. I don’t know if you all knew that in 1940 when the war was kind of stirring up, we were ranked 18th in the world and military preparedness behind Romania. Um, and uh, when Pearl Harbor happened, we weren’t a lot better shape. But I want to tell you, all of a sudden now, people really pulled together, you know, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman and well where they were pulling people together and how can we, you know, save the world for democracy, you know? And so, um, that’s what I’m really interested in. I’m also having fun. I’ve started working on a book called De a duo. H apostrophe. Why is it common sense common practice that always kind of confuses me.

I’m still having fun.

I’ll living legend and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time and you’re scheduled to be on the show. CSI. I know you’re excited to have Ken. This has been incredible to have. Ken. Ken, you are absolutely one of the best guest we’ve ever had on the show. And we’d like to end every show with a boom. Which around here stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. Essentially we say three, two, one. And then we all say, boom. Ken, are you ready to bring a boom from Sunny San Diego? We’re sure west. Are you ready to bring the boom? I was born to. Boom. Andrew, are you ready to bring the boom? Yes sir. See, are you prepared? I’m going to boom. I can charge it. Here we go. The thrive nation.

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