Michael VanDervort (0:05)
Good afternoon. This is Michael Vandervort and we are back for another uh episode of our the next 52 week series that we’re doing. I’m here with Phil Wilson today. We’re going to talk about designing supervisory training and approachability, the one ring of leadership. So, Phil, you wrote you wrote a book about approachability a few years ago, the approachability playbook, and you call it the one ring of leadership. What do you mean by that?

Phil Wilson (00:35)
Well, I tell the story in the book that I did not start out in life to be a leadership consultant or or guru or whatever you want to call it. I I was a labor lawyer. I had done a lot of cases with clients where leadership was kind of at the core of their problems. So, I I’d run across a lot of struggling leaders and I had I’d looked for training. I we had even developed some training for supervisors, but you I just didn’t feel like I’d ever seen anything that really was was the solve for a lot of the challenges and problems that I saw. And so, I got going on this journey of discovery for myself. First of all,
just what is it that is the difference maker between someone who succeeds as a leader and someone who fails? And I had this kind of I don’t know like gnawing notion that there was one ring, right?There was one like this one thing that if we could solve that that the other stuff would kind of fall into place. And after a long a lot of research and basically talking to anyone who would listen to me and asking them what they thought the one ring was, I eventually landed on this foundational behavior of approachability. And so that’s what led to the the it was actually a training and then the then the book came out and then I’ve the sec the you know the new book really deals continues to build on the learning from that first book. But that’s where approachability kind of became what we teach leaders and what we think is really the one ringed rule them all for leadership.

DMichael VanDervort (02:02)
Define approachability for us.

Phil Wilson (02:08)
So approachability if you look at our model it’s really simple. So there’s kind of three key components to being an approachable leader. The first of those components is creating what’s called the right space and that’s you know openness being available to your team. So that’s the that’s the first chunk. The second chunk is what we call right feeling. So that is do you do you seek to understand? Are you understanding? So that’s the second pillar if you will of being an approachable leader. And then the third component is support or what we call right action. And so all three of those elements are required before your team will see you as an approachable leader, as someone who’s safe to come to if they’ve got a question or a concern or a suggestion.

Michael VanDervort (03:00)
So, if you’re approachable to begin with, that’s a great place for a leader to start from to avoid getting into a union campaign, right? It kind of it can be a very strong preventive if you have leadership that acts that way in your culture. But we’re talking right now with the next 52 weeks where maybe that wasn’t the case. So where what how do we apply that approachability within the context of the next 52 weeks? What’s kind of the starting point?

Phil Wilson (03:25)
Yeah. Well, most union campaigns start with some leadership failure. That’s, you know, that would be like when I arrived on the scene. And so you’ll have and there’s varying levels and you have you’ll probably have some supervisors that are that are strong and some supervisors that are okay and some supervisors that are terrible. Uh and some people are naturally sort of gifted at the things that make a leader approachable and some people they have to work at it. but wherever you if your on the other side of a union campaign, first of all, a lot of things have already happened. You’ve been communicating a lot. you probably have developed your leaders a little bit like they’ve definitely had different communication experiences than they probably have ever had in their career and you’ve also probably identified some folks that like these these folks are challenged at leadership and so when you when you start kind of knowing those things then it’s like what do I teach what do I try to do to build up both the supervisors that are just not naturally good at it so I those folks I know they need to work on this part of, you know, their their repertoire. And then you you’ve got the people that maybe are better at it, but like what are there some things that we can teach them that are foundational that will help them even be a better leader. So that’s sort of where you’re at when you get into this like next 52 weeks zone of the, you know, the year post campaign. And by the way, the same thing is true wherever you are on the map, right? So like even if you’ve never had a union campaign, you still have this same situation like you need to evaluate your supervisory talent and to the extent that you see gaps, you know, you got to fill those gaps and and I would submit to you that approachability is a great place to start.

Michael VanDervort (05:03)
How do we teach approachability? How do you how do you train that for managers, especially if someone it’s not their natural approach? As you said, many aren’t. It isn’t for many. Yeah. Well, first of all, let’s talk about what approachability is not. Approachability isn’t being everybody’s best friend. Approachability isn’t being like extroverted. Approachability isn’t, you know, always being like gregarious and friendly. Approachability is is a different It’s those three buckets that I was talking about. And you can be tough and still be approachable. When we when we go in and teach this, we get go into a lot of, you know, tough healthcare environments, manufacturing environments. That’s commonly a question that gets raised by supervisors is like, “Oh, I guess I just have to be nice to everybody.” I’m not saying you should go around being mean to everybody. It’s not it’s not necessarily you have to be everyone’s friend. And you can hold people to really high standards and still be approachable. The key thing about being approachable is really like the word says, right? It’s your approach to the high standards. It’s the way that you think about your team. And so, and to answer your question, how do you teach it? you really break it down to these these key fundamentals. So the openness, you know, that that’s there’s fundamental practices around being open. So part of that is are you available? Part of that is the way you behave like if someone comes to your your desk or someone comes through your door, you know, do you behave like they’re an interruption to you and that they’re annoying or do you behave like I’m happy to see you? That that is a mindset. And you know those are the kinds of behaviors you teach there. The middle bucket of understanding. So this is how good of a listener are you? Do you attempt to to understand the emotion behind the words that are being said? Do you do you listen empathetically? Like that’s that that middle bucket. And then the right action is do you walk your talk? Do you do what you say you’re going to do? Can I trust that if I tell you something that you’ll that in confidence that you’ll keep it in confidence? like the all those sorts of behaviors. So, there’s a lot of, you know, basic blocking and tackling that build up into these three pillars. And if you get and you don’t have to do all of it all the time. The key thing is, you know, doing the thing, practicing it, doing the things that you’re already kind of okay at, doing more of those, adding a couple things to your toolkit as you go. Like, those are the those are the key things that that make a difference. And it’s very trainable. It’s very teachable. We’ve we’ve seen a lot of leaders go through our workshops and become much better leaders.

Michael VanDervort (7:40)
Much better. Yeah. You came up with, I guess you could say, three simple questions that approachable leaders might want to ask the employees. Can you tell us what those are and why they are as powerful as they are for being as simple as they are?

Phil Wilson (07:52)
Yeah. And then I’ll give you three bonus questions also. But so thethree questions of approachable leaders are do you have what you need? So that’s the first one. And there’s assumptions behind these questions. The assumption behind that one’s the hero assumption which the last book really heavily talks about. So or as I I learned yesterday or the Shero assumption for uh you know for women in the audience but so that so that so do you have what you need? The second one is what would make work better? So I talk about this is the f-word of leadership but you’re trying to reduce friction, reduce frustration for your team. So that’s the second question is what would make work better? And then the third question is kind of the development question and it’s what’s next. So those are the three questions and you want to regularly be asking your team, you know, you don’t have to they’re not magic words. You can ask them in different wording, but but thebasic idea is do you need anything? Is there anything that could make this better? And and where you headed? Like what’s what’s your next move here at work? What’s your next move in life? Having those regular conversations, you’ll automatically connect. And then the bonus three questions. These are the three questions your employees want to know the answer to, but they won’t ask you. And I talk about these in the leadership book, but those three questions are, do you like me? How do you get across that you genuinely like the person who’s on your team? Do you like me? Do you think I have what it takes? You know, do you think that I have the ability to do this thing that you’re asking me to do? And then the third one is, do you think I’m worth the effort? So, if I’m struggling, do I know you’ve got my back? Do I know that you’re willing to pour into me and invest in me and that and that you think that that’s worth a worthwhile investment?

Michael VanDervort (09:44)
I listened to a podcast that you did with I think it was Nick Spears. It was from a couple of months back, but you guys had a discussion about kind of like preconceived notions and how you know, nobody you know the nobody wakes up to go to work to be the villain, but a lot of times the manager may perceive that person. Do they reframe this? There’s lots of little kind of mind tricks that you’ve come up with that managers can do and it really makes a difference. I I think you know I’ve listened to a number of your your chats on this and it it seems to really make a difference in the way people perceive the leader. Talk to me about that for a second. How do you change the relationship especially in the next
52 weeks con context where it can be challenging, right? It might everybody’s been under a lot of stress and pressure. So what can we do in that environment to kind of make things better?

Phil Wilson (10:31)
Yeah. Great. Great question. Well, first of all, you as a leader, like there’s a decent chance that you were terrible before this election, right? So, like, you know, it’s you probably have some bridges to build when you’re in this, you know, post election environment. And the fact that you are willing to like learn and grow and try to develop in this leadership component is first of all, it’s really important. It’s going to be hard work. It’s going to be harder for some people because they have probably done some things to create bad blood, you know, you know, months or years before. So, you’re going to have to like get past that. And one of the things we do in our workshop is we’re we’re very blunt about this. It’s like, look, if you weren’t doing this well before, you can’t just expect to go walk out onto the floor and everyone’s going to be like, “Oh, great. You’re transformed. You’re a new like great leader. Congratulations.” like they’re going to be skeptical that they might straight up tell you, you know, what is this psycho babble mumbo jumbo that you’re saying that you, apparently you just got, you know, taught to you in in some crazy leadership class. So, right,
you need to expect that. You need to take it as a gift. I talk about in the leadership book, probably the greatest gift I was ever given as a leader was a person on my team, a very important person on my team that was like, I told your dad I would never work for you. You know, you those that feedback is a gift. If you and if you if you can sort of get through that and they see that you’re trying and that you actually do want to do better, uh you they will turn around and help you, you know, and that’s another that’s like what we call the leadership judo move. But ask for advice, right? It’s like, hey, I appreciate it. I know that I have not treated you well in the past. This is something I want to get better at, and could you please continue? If you see me kind of slipping back into old bad habits, could you please give me the gift of that feedback? Like letting me know that. If you approach somebody like that, they don’t want to have a bad boss. Like they will give you the feedback. They they will if you show that you’re approachable and that you were trying, they will help you. And not only that, they’ll also probably start to overlook some of the things that you know that maybe you still do, but they’re going to they’re willing to give you some grace and and give you a pass on things because they can tell like you’re working hard at trying to be an approachable leader, right?

Michael VanDervort (12:59)
Yeah. I mean, in olden times in another role, I mean, we would go to sites and sometimes try to do like, you know, help from the outside, you know, coming coming from corporate or whatever, help in an environment where maybe things weren’t great. And one of the most powerful things that I found was like admit the sit like we realize everything is not perfect and that’s why we’re here and we don’t know exactly what we need to do to fix it but we want to hear what you have to and it becomes transformative because people they want to believe that you that you’re sincere about that and and hopeful that you can do it and if and then if you deliver it’s super powerful. So it’s like you called it simple. It’s hard but it’s simple and it’s kind of that knowing doing thing. Um you know I think you said that many companies struggle with the knowing doing gap and what is that and why traditional training programs often fail on that front?

Phil Wilson (13:50)
Yeah. Well you know that it’s like it’s like in life you know you know what to do. It’s the it’s the doing it that can be the hard part. And right so so one of the things that we do to try to shrink that gap is to make it don’t don’t try to you know as I say like eat the whale all in one bite right you are you just you don’t need to do everything better you need to identify like when we go through the workshop we have leaders go through and there’s these three buckets right and we teach them a few things in each of the three buckets and then and then after we’ve taught you the thing in the openness bucket, we we then reflect, well, what were two or three things that you think you could do different out of that bucket that would that would impact positively impact you as a leader, right? And then you go to the second bucket now and now you do the same thing. You reflect back on we’ve learned some things now about understanding what’s two or three things that you could do. And then same thing with support. And then at the end of the training, we go, “Okay, you’ve now got a list of probably somewhere between, you know, eight and 10 things that you thought that you could work on. What is the one thing on that list that you think would make the biggest difference?” And we even use the old, you know, it would be easy to do but have a high impact. Pick that one thing and then just commit for the next 30 days you’re going to start doing that one thing. Like that’s a way to get past sort of I know what to do, but am I gonna actually do it? Break it down to the most simple thing that you can do. And then you can always start to stack on top of that. So like, okay, I’ve made this first thing a habit. Let me go back to my list of eight or 10 things and now I’ll pick like the second easiest and highest impact thing and now I’m going to work on that for 30 days. That’s how you build momentum. And if you try to do everything, you’re basically going to do nothing. So just make it really easy.

Michael VanDervort (15:51)
That depends on the individual, right? Because depending on their skill set, maybe they’re especially good at one thing, but they’re not good at another. So they kind of keep doing the stuff that you’re adept at, but try to really try to focus on the one. Yeah, for sure. That’s I mean, you know, we talk about colloquially or euphemistically about eating the elephant, right? It’s one bite at a time, right? Kind of leadership is often the same way.

Phil Wilson (16:15)
Yeah. Absolutely. And I mean, you know, and like you said, it’s individualized. So, you know, not everybody is going to have the same one item on their list. And that’s another way that we try to make it very practical and useful is what is that one thing that you can do? And oh, by the way, these aren’t just work behaviors. You can, right? You can work on this at home. Maybe the most important relationship that you have to work on isn’t even somebody on your team. It could be with like your kid or a spouse, you know? So, so that is the other thing that we try to do is make sure that we’re, you know, there you can use this wherever you are. So, pick the place where it’s going to have the biggest impact. Even if that might not be at work, go ahead and learn the behavior and work on the behavior will seep its way into all parts of your life. But that, you know, it doesn’t have to necessarily be a work assignment.

Michael VanDervort (17:04)
Yeah. So, so going back to the next 52 weeks concept, you know, you you said some supervisors are great, some bad some in the middle, they all have, you know, they may they may have different attributes that that they’re particularly good or bad at.

In that context, as you’re trying to, you know, heal a site, say it’s a manufacturing plant where you’ve had an election, how does the leadership at that plant approach this like designing? How do how do you work with your leaders? like you know how do you say okay Michael you need to work on this and Phil this is how do we help clients that way?

Phil Wilson (17:43)
Well there’s a couple things there. The first one is not everybody is meant to be a leader. So we talked about in a prior episode that you’re you know you need to make sure that the people that you have leading other people are actually have the skill set and the mindset and are willing to work at it. Right? So you may identify that you’ve got somebody on your team that might be a right person for some other position or role, but they’re but they’re not a fit for being a leader of people. And so part of it is, you know, you ask them and you train them and you work with them to adopt these behaviors. But I would say if you’re thinking about like the one-year roadmap here, you may identify one or maybe more than one person who at the end of this year they’re not going to be leading people.

Okay, so that’s part of it. By the way, if you can figure out a seat where that person is a fit, they know they can’t lead people either. They get frustrated.  Part of the reason they’re not that great is because of their frustration of being in a role that they’re not fit for. So that’s uh you know that can be part of it. And look some people maybe there is not that other seat for them. They need to go be in a place where they’re not leading people and that they can impact others in a positive way doing something else but like not as a supervisor.

So there’s that issue that is a top of the leadership food chain. You know you’ve got to be committed that if you’re going to lead people here you are we have you are going to be approachable. So that now the other part of that is you don’t get a pass when you’re above this line on the organizational chart. Like you’ve got to be committed to being approachable yourself and be approachable to your first level reports that report up to you. So the middle managers, you know, you have to be committed to that as well.

Those I would say are the kind of the two key things that if you are really going to change a culture over the course of a year and it can be done and it’s been done lots and lots of times but it requires those two things.

Michael VanDervort (19:46)
Do you have a list or are there core skills for leaders that that as you’re  kind of rebooting or however you want to say, are there core skills that leadership like top leadership should be looking for in the hierarchy?

I know you can it’s easy to say approachability but leadership requires a lot of things. Are there other core skills?

Phil Wilson (20:11)
Well, I think you know a key part of it is is just mindset. Like I feel like these foundational things and I mean you’re not wrong, right? It’s not you can say it’s are they approachable. That seems like a u like a vague fluffy thing to say, but like I said, there’s a lot of behaviors that are underneath that that umbrella term of approachability.

And those are the things you would want to be on the lookout for, right? Do you know do people approach the leader? You can watch the behavior of the team around this leader. If they’re not approaching, then the leader is not approachable.

Okay. I think the other things that you’re looking for are, you know, are they bringing to me as a top level leader? Is this person coming to me with things that their team has suggested or are they coming to me with things that their team has said, hey, our work would be better if we did this? Like if they’re coming to you with that means that their team is coming to them with those things. That’s a real positive sign. If you never hear that from this leader over here, that’s a good sign that there’s a problem over there. Now, those employees might not be complaining. Sometimes they don’t complain because the leaders like, “If you go talk to somebody above me, you know, I’m going to make your life hell.” But if you’re not hearing from that leader things that their team is suggesting, then there’s some breakdown. That person’s not approachable.

So, those are those are some really simple practical ways that you can kind of evaluate. And then I think the other part of it is really this this like with a hero assumption mindset. Is this a person who when they’re faced with a challenge with someone on their team, you know, are there are they treating them like the villain or are they treating them like the hero?

And when they come to you with a with a challenge about someone on their team, you the way that they’re presenting it and the way that they explain it is going to tell you sort of which way are they flipping. And if they’re always on that sort of villain side, they either need to change that mindset or maybe they’re not in the right role.

Michael VanDervort (22:12)
Yeah. I think of like supervisors who focus on like say just productivity as long as you’re fast. Yeah. It doesn’t really nobody nothing else really matter. Yeah. I mean, that’s over oversimplifying, but it’s kind of like you need to you need to kind of support all the all the goals, all the expected behaviors, and if they do that, plus listen, empathy, then then you’ve got a golden supervisor to work with, and those are hard to find.

We talk a lot about how like first-line supervisors are kind of the lynch pin for a lot of the a lot of the stuff that happens in in any organization. What role should supervisors, especially frontline, play in company communications and how can we train them to make them stronger in that role or what else can we do?

Phil Wilson (22:54)
Well, you know, Nick and I did a whole episode on this, so I would just refer you to what we talked about there, but you know, the but the highlight reel of that is you have to ask them to communicate things, right? like they they need to be part of your communication plan and they should be communicating regularly about big things, right?

So, if you’re making a change in benefits, that’s not just HR’s job. Like your supervisors also need to understand what’s the changes in the benefit plan, how’s that going to impact the individuals on your team, what are maybe some other options that they could explore.

So, like you make them part of the chain of communication all the way down. You know, they say you have to hear something seven times. It’s better if they don’t hear it like seven times from the same person, but you make the supervisors one of those seven touch points.

Michael VanDervort (23:47)
Yeah. We like I’ve seen a lot of communication efforts fail because it didn’t get cascaded down far enough. there’s a nice package somewhere. It gets distributed, but nobody ever really explains it or says, “Hey, this is what you need to say in your huddle meeting.” And then things are and then people go, “I don’t Oh, and they say, “Oh, corporate said,” or whatever.

Phil Wilson (24:07)
Exactly. It’s like you’re designing the communication failure by not including the supervisors because look, they don’t read the stuff either. If you’re not like making them say it to their team, they’re not going. That’s the point where they’re going to actually read it and absorb it and try to understand it.

And then you should prepare them. ask them questions that you think their employees are going to ask them and see how they answer those questions and give them a couple of reps of that. That is the only way that they’re going to and then at that point act like they own it. They can’t be like that’s just you know those guys upstairs. They don’t know what’s going on down here. You know that like they they will deflect everything back upstairs. So they need to be the part of the reason they need to be the spokesperson is they are management.

They’re part of management and you need to have them be part of management.

Michael VanDervort (24.59)
So, we’re down to getting down towards the end. So, to kind of close out, got a couple ending questions. Number one, how do you make sure supervisors actually apply what they’ve learned assuming you provide training on approachability and that that type of stuff instead of just kind of, you know, leaving the room and letting it go stale? How do you reinforce this? How do you encourage these behaviors?

Phil Wilson (25:21)
I mean it’s the biggest challenge and I’ll be honest like it’s you we we have the exact same challenge when we go and deliver training you know there are some clients that want us to come back and we have you know multiple modules and we have other kind of activities that you can do even in between them and some people do it and some people don’t. The way that you do it is this is not a one and one.

You don’t change human behavior by going to a class even if that class is great and even if there’s a lot of great practical experiences in there. That is not going to change habit. That’s not going to change embedded behavior that you’ve had for years. Like you are going to have to practice it. You’re going to have to recall what happened in that class. You’re going to have to really work with the material and practice.

So, the way that you do that is on a semi-regular basis, monthly is really good. Go back and just get that cohort together that was in the class and this doesn’t have to be complicated. You can you could train more content.

You could do something fancier, but it can just be as simple as we’re going to go grab lunch and we’re going to talk a little bit about what was it like to be a leader here in the last month. Remember that workshop that we did? You picked something that you were going to work on, like how did that go this month? Did anybody have any challenges with a thing that they were going to do? That will lead to conversations where it’s like, oh, I had that challenge. Oh, I’m pretty good at that. I think I could help you with that. You know, that’s how that would go. But you experience share. How did the how did the last month go on , in leadership?

And then you go, okay, well, why don’t we grab those lists that we had from the last training and we had like other things that we might work on. Let’s go through those lists real quick and why don’t we commit that next month we’re going to have lunch and we’ll get back together and we’re going to pick one of these items on the list and we’re going to try to work on that. like that would be perfect. Like you don’t have it doesn’t have to be any fancier than that. It’s just the discipline to do that on a regular enough basis that I don’t forget everything and I quit doing the things that I committed to.

Michael VanDervort (27:40)
I also have found as a practitioner if these things are measured like in performance appraisals and you know your accountability coming down from the top but also reinforcing and rewarding those things is incredibly powerful as well. I mean it it’s an ongoing program. It’s not a one and done. I guess is the kind of the big takeaway.

Speaking of that, as as a last question, how can companies reward and reinforce supervisors for building strong employee relation skills over over the long haul, not just in the next 52 weeks should be something you strive for all the time, right?

Phil Wilson (28:19)
Yeah, for sure.  All these things are things you should be doing all the time, not just, you know, in this in this zone. But if you are coming out of an election, like it’s really important to do this right in that year. I would say so. I mean look it can be you can have like a program right where you’re measuring you know you can measure how do people rate you could survey people and how do they rate their leader you can look at turnover statistics you can look at you know voluntary quits. there’s data that you could collect to measure how someone’s doing.

you could measure you know how many suggestions come from different supervisors of their teams or things like that right.  we’ve already talked about the things a leader could observe of their leaders. You know, you could measure some of those things.

You could certainly do a program like that. I honestly think the best thing that you could do is to tell stories where you see and you as the top leader are going to be in the position to observe, wow, you know, Joe’s team came back with another great suggestion here. Here’s how to acknowledge the suggestion. Acknowledge here’s what we did with the suggestion. It’s got a great impact. that’s going to impact all the other departments. And by the way, it is great that Joe’s team feels safe and comfortable coming to him with those conversations, right?

Like telling stories, illustrating that by behaving in this approachable way, positive things are happening for both the team and for the leader. Like that that is probably the best reward and recognition that you can give.

Michael VanDervort (29:51)
Yeah. kind of like our core value shout outs that we do at our weekly meetings. I mean, it takes two seconds and yet people know exactly what somebody’s thinking, which is great.

Phil Wilson (30:04)
We literally just walked out of a meeting and it wasn’t two seconds, right? We probably spent five minutes like shouting each other out for things that we’ve worked on.

Michael Vandervort (30:17)
five minutes of a 45 minute or an hour long meeting. Yeah. Not a significant amount of time, but a kind of a significant component of the meeting and the culture. Yeah. and it’s not hard. It’s just like just share just thank people that kind of thing. So that’s sort of the last question outside of I guess to wrap up. Any final thoughts you want to leave with somebody before we head out of here?

Phil Wilson (30:35)
I just can’t emphasize enough. I mean I if you get this one thing right? This is the most important thing. I mean that’s why it’s the one ring to rule them all.

Like if your first level supervisors have really strong connected relationships with their team, you are not going to have a union problem. You’re going to have much better performance. Everyone is going to enjoy working with each other even when times are hard. Like it’s just it changes everything. It is literally the operationalization of your culture. If that relationship is good, your cultureis good.

And I can’t emphasize enough how important this thing is. And it sounds almost like too simple to be that important. It is absolutely foundational to everything else that you do. If you don’t have this foundation right, the rest of the house, you know, crumbles.

Michael VanDervort (31:31)
This is the most important thing you can do, right? Skip level meetings, town hall meetings, all the things. Unless people have that one to one relationship where they can talk to their supervisor and back and forth, everything else kind of crumbles. I agree. Yeah.

All right. Well, that’s a great way to end. Bye all.