In this week’s episode, Laura and Mike explore the power of visioning exercises, the challenges of navigating remote work culture, and the aspirations for a workplace that mirrors the nurturing environment of parenthood. Along the way, they explore the importance of specific feedback and the role of leadership in fostering an environment that not only aims for traditional success but also supports the well-being and development of its people.
Bridging Visions
Workplaces, parenthood, and the quest for fulfillment
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[1:49] - The Power of Visioning
Looking forward to look backward
Laura shares a personal story about how a visioning exercise led her to reconsider her stance on having children, illustrating how professional tools and exercises can profoundly influence personal life choices. This story highlights the unexpected ways in which professional development activities can spur personal revelations and lead to significant life decisions.
[9:30] - Parenting and the Workplace
How a parent and a manager align
Mike offers his perspective on parenting and workplace culture, including the evolution towards providing growth opportunities and supportive, encouraging environments in both areas. This comparison sheds light on the shift towards nurturing environments more broadly, whether in the context of raising children or fostering employee growth. When you want to be a great leader, ask yourself: what would a parent do?
[24:00] - The Ongoing Challenge of Remote Work
The new norms bring new barriers to overcome
The conversation arrives at the continued complexities and adjustments required in the era of remote work, including balancing workloads and helping employees manage their time effectively without the traditional office environment. Mike and Laura agree that we must acknowledge both the benefits and challenges of remote work, emphasizing the importance of self-care and effective work habits for holistic success.
[41:30] - Companies that Support the Individual
Getting to the heart of “Love in Leadership”
Mike shares his vision for companies to actively engage with employees' aspirations and work together to support their achievement. It’s essential to find a balance between individual responsibility and organizational support, a model where companies take a proactive role in encouraging — and actively developing — employee growth and satisfaction.
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ABOUT LOVE IN LEADERSHIP:
At the Life You Love LaboratoryTM and BIGGBY® COFFEE, we’re out to prove that financial success and healthy workplace culture aren’t two separate goals. BIGGBY® COFFEE's own cultural transformation is proof that not only is it possible to have a successful company where people aren’t miserable at work, but that the happier your people are, the more your business will grow. Each week, join host Laura Eich, Chief Purpose Officer at BIGGBY® COFFEE, and her co-host and BIGGBY® COFFEE co-CEO Mike McFall as they’re joined by guests from around the world to learn how they are fostering a culture of love and growth in the world’s most innovative and people-centric companies. Get inspired. Get real. Get ready to transform workplace culture in America with us. This is the Love in Leadership podcast.
Learn more at: loveinleadershippodcast.com
ABOUT THE HOSTS:
Mike McFall began his journey with BIGGBY® COFFEE as a minimum-wage barista at the original store in East Lansing in 1996. Over the span of 23 years, alongside business partner Bob Fish, he has helped create one of the great specialty coffee brands in America. Today Mike is co-CEO with Bob, and BIGGBY® COFFEE has over 250 stores open throughout the Midwest that sell tens of thousands of cups of coffee each day. But more importantly to Mike and BIGGBY® COFFEE, the company is a profoundly people-first organization.
Mike is also the author of Grind, a book which focuses on early stage businesses and how to establish positive cash flow.
Laura Eich is BIGGBY® COFFEE’s Chief People Officer, having worked in a variety of roles at BIGGBY® COFFEE for the last 11+ years. She helped launch BOOST, the department at BIGGBY® COFFEE which ultimately became LifeLabTM — BIGGBY® COFFEE’s inhouse culture cultivation team designed to help people be the best versions of themselves and help companies support them along the way. In her role, Laura helps people build lives that they love through the process of building profitable businesses and robust, growth-filled careers.
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Laura:
Welcome everybody. This is Laura. I'm joined as always by my favorite, oh, this is the thing I need to talk to you about, but my favorite co-host, Mike McFall.
Mike McFall:
Oh, let's talk about it.
Laura:
Okay. So I got scolded while I was on maternity leave about how, there was a couple of times where I said you are my only co-host, but once a year I host a very special awards show within Biggby Nation with a very special co-host of mine. She's been on the show, Brie Roper, and she texted me every time we said, "Only co-host."
Mike McFall:
Well, podcast co-host.
Laura:
Podcast co-host. I know. So I need to clarify.
Mike McFall:
Do whatever you feel is right.
Laura:
Yeah. I just need to clarify. Mike McFall is my favorite podcast co-host and my only podcast co-host.
Mike McFall:
Yeah.
Laura:
It's very special to me.
Mike McFall:
Great. Wonderful.
Laura:
Yeah.
Mike McFall:
Hi, Laura.
Laura:
How are you?
Mike McFall:
Welcome back.
Laura:
Thank you.
Mike McFall:
This is so exciting.
Laura:
I know. So we should explain this one. Podcast time, I mean time is always an illusion, but podcast time and real lifetime work a little bit differently. So we are recording for the first time in a couple of months because I went and had a baby and now I'm back with my baby. She's awesome.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. And the self-restraint it took for me to leave you alone when you were on maternity leave was like... And then I find out other people are texting you, and I'm like, "What? I didn't think you were allowed to do that."
Laura:
I think you're allowed to text, you're just not allowed to make it about work.
Mike McFall:
Oh.
Laura:
Which there's a fine line, right?
Mike McFall:
Right.
Laura:
Because it doesn't feel like work.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. It's kind of an odd question.
Laura:
I don't know. [inaudible 00:01:49].
Mike McFall:
And you can say no to this. But can we tell the story about when you realized you wanted to have a baby because I was there for that moment?
Laura:
So once upon a time, we have a book, it's called the Moonshot Guidebook, and it's a visioning tool. It's meant to help you just sort of dream out your life, set goals for your life, starts with the biggest concepts and sort of works it down to really practical stuff. And we fill this out generally every year. I've done it every year since it wasn't named the Moonshot Guidebook. And there was for a long time, my husband and I had been married for a good long while, and we had been very proudly DINKs, dual income, no kids, my favorite phrase, my actual favorite phrase is DINK WADs. We were dual income, no kids with a dog.
Mike McFall:
So I have a new phrase in my house, and so when my kids are not behaving how I want them to, I call them DINKLERs, and I didn't know this phrase DINK, but it's funny now because my kids refer to themselves as DINKLERs.
Laura:
Oh, that's funny.
Mike McFall:
Or they'll refer to each other as DINKLER. So anyway, DINK, is that okay? So anyway, you were DINKs.
Laura:
We were proudly, proudly DINKs. And one time a couple of years ago, I was writing, one of the questions in the book is like 20 years from now or the end of your life, what do you want your life to look like? And I found myself describing these grandkids, and I thought to myself, "Oh, crap." Because we didn't have a plan to have kids. And literally I got angry at my book. I closed it, I threw it on the ground, and I walked away and came back to it a couple, I think weeks later and was like, "Okay, we got to finish this vision." So that was when I started considering like, "Oh my gosh, the way to have a grandkid is to start with a kid." And I had to tell Steven.
Mike McFall:
I remember some moment in all of that, I don't know when it was, where you put your face in your hands and just started laughing. Right? You remember? And you were like, "I can't believe I wrote about..." Anyway.
Laura:
Super wild.
Mike McFall:
I love that story, by the way, it is sort of how the visioning process is not a linear direct path.
Laura:
It is not. And I need to do this year's Moonshot Guidebook because now my whole world has changed this little perfect, beautiful human in it that has completely changed my perspective on basically everything ever. No big deal.
Mike McFall:
Instantly.
Laura:
Instantly. Truly. I wish anyone could have truly warned me about that, by the way because I know you can't.
Mike McFall:
I can't.
Laura:
But wow.
Mike McFall:
And the moments keep coming. So I'll just tell a quick Renzo story. So Renzo's four, and they've been into this parkour thing, my 7-year-old and my 4-year-old. So they're jumping on everything and they're leaping and they're... And I'm looking at this stuff and I'm like, "Man, we are going to end up in the ER for sure." So anyway, Renzo on Saturday, we were over at some friend's house and he came in through the front door and he's crying, and I go up to him and I grab him and he fell out of a tree. And so he falls out of this tree and we're like, "Well, you look all right." He's walking and he's talking and it's like, "Well, okay, go ahead, get back." So he came back in later and he was complaining about his stomach hurting and his mom, Veta is like, "I told you you had to poop.
I told you you had to poop." Right? So she's thinking he's got to go to the bathroom. So she takes him in there and then she pulls up his whatever. I don't know how it all went down, but he has these two huge gashes right down both sides of his stomach. And I am like, "Thank goodness," because now he understands cause and effect and he understands that gravity is powerful, right?
Laura:
My gosh.
Mike McFall:
Anyway, big milestone for us.
Laura:
Wow.
Mike McFall:
Now I know he's not because he was leaping from limb to limb 10 feet in the air. And I'm like-
Laura:
I mean, that's awesome. But yeah, gravity's a hard lesson.
Mike McFall:
It's funny because he's kind of walking around an old man right now because it hurts. So he's kind of like, "Oh," anyway, parenting, parenting, parenting. So let me tear into this, since we're talking about parenting. There's the concept in the world that I love and it is create the workplace that you would want your baby or you would want Charlie to have, and what does that look like to you?
Laura:
Yeah. Oh, man, I thought about that when she was here because we've talked about that for years, is you've always mentioned this, create the environment, create the workplace, treat your employees, not like your children, but like you would want your children to be treated kind of thing. And it's hard to imagine right now the milestones we're working on is grasping an object. But yeah, the immediate protectiveness that I felt like leaving the hospital, I remember there was strangers in the waiting room that we had to wheel past, and I was like, "Get my baby away from those people immediately." It's so crazy. And so that's where my brain is right now as far as her growing up.
When I think about her growing up and getting her heart broken and entering the workforce and this, that, and the other thing, I intend my child to never work somewhere that she hates because this is what we do. This is what we're trying so hard to combat, and I will do my best to help her find the companies and the workplaces that will treat her right because I think her and her generation are going to... They're going to grow up with a different expectation, I hope. I think the expectation's starting to happen, which is great. But yeah, I will be the parent who is like... My parents were like, "Get a good job, get a stable job, blah, blah, blah." And mine's going to be like, "Get a job you love, get a job you love and that loves you back and treats you well. And if you're not there, then we'll find a different one." And just protecting her.
Mike McFall:
And for me, it's I'm at a different stage of my parenting journey, and it's more than protection, is an opportunity to grow and to learn and to where your organization will support you in that quest, whatever that quest is. And to me, that's the point of the work we're doing in trying to improve workplace culture. The vision we have is to improve workplace culture in the United States so that anybody that goes to work gets that environment and that you're not going to have to work hard to find it. You're not going to have to be governing her life to help her find it. It's like she's going to go into the workforce and there's going to be an expectation in the world that the workplace is a nurturing, supportive, loving, invigorating environment.
Laura:
Yes, and the other sort of parenting equation that I came across early on was I read this thing about how every generation of parents is obligated to do a better job than their parents, to evolve and to basically do this better, and that every generation should get a little bit better at it.
Mike McFall:
I got a high bar on that deal.
Laura:
Yeah. Yes, you did. [inaudible 00:09:50] are magical.
Mike McFall:
Man. I'm telling you, they're not perfect, but I mean-
Laura:
They're very, very good.
Mike McFall:
I love that thinking. I'm trying. I'm trying.
Laura:
But I think that's the same. I think again, that equates to the workplace where it's like every generation of leaders within workplaces should be doing better than the leaders that came before them. That should be... And the leaders before them should celebrate that, which sometimes we don't because egos are involved in stuff. But it should be that we're... I look forward to the day, or I'm trying to hold onto this and I will hold onto this as long as I can. I look forward to the day when there's someone much younger than me who's like, "You need to step aside because I've got this and I'm going to do it better than you." I am looking forward to that.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I often pontificate around the idea that all of this stuff that we advocate for in a healthy workplace is what great leaders have been doing in history. We just never called it things like love. We never called it supporting. But there have been plenty of great leaders throughout history that have been amazing to their people. It is just there's been a swing in emphasis in the last 50 years away from the need to take care of your people and focused on purely on adding value and profitability. And I still think even through all of that, there were great leaders that were focused on this human centric focus of leadership, and that we have a responsibility as leaders to take care of the people within our sphere, within our sphere of influence. So anyway, I hope that it's just natural in the not too distant future.
At one point it was, I mean, this is sad to say, but at one point it was kind of okay to have people die on the job back in the day. And then we kind of got through that one. It was no longer okay for people to die on the job. Okay, cool. Well, we're progressing. But then we dealt with things like it was okay to be racist and it was okay to be sexist, incriminate. And I mean, I'm not sure we're 100% through that one, but we're a long, long ways through that one. And so this is just the next evolution where it's no longer about not being bad, not hurting people, or being racist or sexist, whatever. Now it's about actually being good to people and treating them in a way that they're going to grow and they're going to develop and they're going to be inspired and they're going to love coming to work in the morning and so on.
Laura:
Yeah, I mean, that's why we're here. So I should say this because we just jumped right in because we miss each other, which is fun. Today, we're not going to have a guest on the show. We want to do just a little bit of reflection back on the season so far, and a little bit of looking ahead to the next season of the Love and Leadership podcast. But this idea, the idea, we've had this debate a little bit throughout the season, which has been great leaders through time bringing love into leadership naturally, the whole point being that the focus has shifted from profit being the only measure of success to how you treat your people being the actual measure of success.
And in fact, that treating people better will in fact lead your business to better financial success in the long run, and probably better sustainability in the long run. And you get much more beautiful work out of people who are enjoying their job and loving their job and everything like that. So that is in fact why we're here, why we are doing this podcast and what we want to continue doing. And I think we had a lot of fun getting to talk to people so far this season who are doing that, which is really beautiful. And both within the Biggby community and a couple of friends from-
Laura:
Which is really beautiful. And both within the Biggby community and a couple of friends from beyond the Biggby community, because I think it is spreading. And I think that's the thing I've loved talking about this year, is just seeing all the different ways that leaders do this. I think of the Jon Sell and Norma episode. They're so different personality-wise, but their hearts are the same. And I think that's so cool to explore with people. And I feel like that's what we got to do the last few episodes, which was just a lot of fun.
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:14:04]
Mike McFall:
Yeah, it was perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you said you had some things that were burning in your mousetrap up there. Yeah.
Laura:
Well, and we can either choose to dive into them today or we can choose to chat about them as we record different episodes and that kind of thing. But I literally had a notes document on my phone when I was listening to episodes or-
Mike McFall:
Oh, cool.
Laura:
... thinking. Usually when I'm rocking Charlie to sleep at night is when I'm listening to podcasts. And so I would just take notes of things that I'm like, oh, I want to talk about this with someone.
Mike McFall:
Do you have the rocker with the Ottoman that rocks too?
Laura:
The Ottoman does not rock. We have a little pouf on the floor instead of an Ottoman, but we have a glider and it's the most comfortable glider in the world.
Mike McFall:
Okay. Well, all right.
Laura:
Are you saying I missed out?
Mike McFall:
The ottoman that rocks with the chair is like, I mean.
Laura:
Missed opportunity. It's a small room. I didn't think I had room for an Ottoman. No. So some of the things, I'm just literally going to tell you the list, and then if we choose to talk about them today, we can. If you don't want to dive in any of them and we want to save them. That's fine. Go ahead.
Mike McFall:
How many episodes have we done?
Laura:
We've done eight so far.
Mike McFall:
So here's my take. And when we did this, what did I make you promise that we would do how many episodes?
Laura:
100 episodes.
Mike McFall:
Minimum.
Laura:
Minimum.
Mike McFall:
Because it's my take that we won't even know what the heck we're doing until about episode 80, and then we're going to start getting good at this. So I apologize to everyone that's on the learning curve with us if you're listening to these episodes. But anyway-
Laura:
It's great. It's great for posterity to send people back to here someday.
Mike McFall:
Because when people come into our business, franchise owners come into the business, I'm like, no, no. The first two years, you're just learning. You're just learning. Just set yourself with the expectation that you're going back to school learning how to run a coffee shop, and at the end of two years you'll have such a foundation built that you can build a successful business upon that foundation, and then you can start to grow and expand and build the most amazing, beautiful business in the world. Okay, now I feel that same way about the podcast that we're going to get to 100, and it's going to be like we're going to have all the learnings, many of the learnings, not all, many of the learnings, and then we can start to build the most amazing podcast in the world. So anyway, I just wanted, I'm not sure we ever talked about that on the air that that was my expectation.
Laura:
That was my expectation too. And I do feel like the learning curve has been steep. It's actually another one of those parallels with parenting, by the way, because wow. Wow, the learning curve. But no, I think we've learned a lot over this first season. I think we've learned how long is a enjoyable conversation. I don't know that we've reached how long is too long yet though. So someday we're going to find somebody, and we're going to find out how long is too long. I think we've learned how we want to be with each other on here.
Mike McFall:
Yeah, that learning curve wasn't very steep, but.
Laura:
That's good.
Mike McFall:
I've learned that my volume needs to be set at nine zero.
Laura:
You what? Say that again. Your sound, yes.
Mike McFall:
My volume needs to set at nine zero. Yeah.
Laura:
Yeah. You have much fans here.
Mike McFall:
Okay, so you want to go through your list?
Laura:
Yes. Okay. So one of the things that would be totally logical that was on my mind is how we could do better advocating for families in the workplace and the utter anguish involved in figuring out who's going to take care of your kid when they're brand new, and the concept of handing a tiny, tiny baby to a stranger, and just what could we do as a workplace to do better for people.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. I think it would be really cool to bring some people on that have been through that. So didn't Jackson National Life Insurance Company in Okemos, didn't they build a whole daycare for their employees and their babies and children?
Laura:
I think so. I think, because we talked about doing that when we were in person for a while.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. Okay, that's good. That's one that's very topical.
Laura:
Yes. The challenge of remote culture. I don't think we got to actually talk about much, and that just happens to obviously be a thing we fight over. But I was also reading stories, talking to people, listening to stories about there's this tug of war between forcing people to be remote, forcing people to be in person. How do you maintain your culture when you are remote? What about the people who do better remote versus in-person, and vice versa? How could we individualize this? And it's like, Why is this so hard to figure out? Why is this, I don't know. I don't know why we haven't figured it out yet, but it does seem like a challenge that the whole world is facing.
Mike McFall:
It's going to take decades to figure this out. I mean, I'm sorry, but we're not going back. We're not going back to, I don't think, I mean, some companies are. I think those are archaic. The ones that are forcing their employees to come back. I don't even know that many that are. I know there are some that are doing split time, two days or three days in the office and that kind of thing. And I think that's great.
Laura:
It reads like a lot of companies are, though. This is like I was just coming across articles or TikToks or whatever that it feels like a lot of companies are like, yep, you got to come back to the office now.
Mike McFall:
Yeah.
Laura:
I don't get it.
Mike McFall:
Well, I mean, to me, that is going to get in the way of these big... Because I don't think, well, I'm surmising here, so I'm just going to say that upfront. But big, powerful brands where people have to or really want to work at that company for the cache or whatever, I think they are going to get away with forcing people back into the office. Although, I heard there was something pretty significant that went down at a big software company that they tried to demand that their employees come back, and the employees said, no. I should know facts before I talk.
Laura:
It's a podcast. We don't have to do that.
Mike McFall:
Right. But anyway, the companies that are going to be more flexible, more nimble, provide the right situation for the individual, like, yeah, we can provide the opportunity for people to be more face-to-face if that's what they want or if people are more comfortable. But think of the people that we've been able to attract into our company in the last three years that we would never have gotten. Do you think for one second we would've attracted Erin Kaylor to this company if she had to move to Lansing, Michigan?
Laura:
No.
Mike McFall:
Never.
Laura:
And she's magic. She's amazing.
Mike McFall:
We've got many of those examples, and we also have examples of employees moving to places they've always wanted to live. And that's super beautiful. And so I don't think, we're never going back. And I just wrote an article for Forbes, it'll come out this month, March, that was basically: Remote or in-person? It doesn't matter! And my point is, your culture is important regardless. And so, you just have to figure it out. You have to figure out how to do it. And there's going to be challenges with remote, right? There's going to be challenges trying to demand people come back. I mean, there's just challenges everywhere. It's our job as leadership to figure that stuff out.
Laura:
Right. Well, I remember there's been times where I'm in a conversation with someone and they want to just say, let's just go back to the office. Let's just go back to in-person work, which I legitimately for my life, don't think I could say yes to as an example, by the way. I have to do this this way now. And they're like, all these things would be so much easier, and this would be better, and culture maintenance would be easier, and there'd be this quicker exchange of ideas. And yes, all of those are true. And also, I used to manage the political maintenance of the office, and it took about half of every week to manage who was going to empty the dishwasher and someone killed the Joe, they got to make some O and the training center is dirty, and the front desk duties, and who's answering the bat phone?
We had all of these things that were a whole bunch of extra work too that we seem to have forgotten. And those things would have to actually get picked up again. Now, I don't think we're talking about going back personally for Biggby Coffee kind of thing, going back into the office, because I think remote definitely works for us, but I also do know that there's people who would do better emotionally. It suits their personality style better to be with other people. And we haven't solved how to support that other than to say go work at a Biggby store, which is fun, but it's not exactly the same as working with your coworkers.
Mike McFall:
I was working with a guy last week who is working out of, God, that's a lot of works. I was working with a guy last week that's working out of a WeWork, a lot of works-
Laura:
That was a lot of works.
Mike McFall:
And he works remote, but he leases a space. I don't know what the deal is, but he leases, and he goes in there, and he says he sees the same people a lot, and they hang out. Now they don't work for the same company, but you still get to have a little bit of companionship, and they go to lunch together and so on. And that's an option. That's an option to do that kind of thing for your employees as well.
Yeah. I think though that the upside, so I used to make a case that people that worked 50 hours a week were actually working 25 because they would just waste an extraordinary amount of time in an office. And now, in a remote setting, if you need to get that amount of work done, 25 hours, it probably takes you about 25 hours. Well, you just freed up a whole bunch of time, that I hope you can schedule a whole bunch of self-care, going for walks, whatever it is that you need to do during the day to take care of yourself. You can't sit in an office and work on Zoom in front of a computer by yourself for 40-50 hours a week. You just can't. And you never used to.
Laura:
I think most of our company does.
Mike McFall:
That's a problem.
Laura:
I know.
Mike McFall:
That's a problem.
Laura:
I could hear the people in our company being like self-care? More meetings. Which is a challenge.
Mike McFall:
But to me, my take on all of that, and-
Laura:
I do.
Mike McFall:
... nobody wants to hear it. And I rub people the wrong way when I say it. But your self-care is your responsibility. And you don't need to be in all of those meetings, and you need to make good decisions for yourself and opt out of meetings so that your life is reasonable. And then, you know what? If you can't figure out how to live a reasonable life and work in our company, then you need to call me directly, and we need to have a conversation because you're not getting taken care of by your leader, and that's your leader's job. Your direct report's job is to manage your life with you in a way that it's reasonable and that you aren't sitting in front of a computer screen for 50 hours a week. You can't do that, right? So anyway, that's my take. And I know it rubs people the wrong way, but I tell people all the time that I could easily be a workaholic, right? Easily. Easily. And I had to figure that shit out on my own. I didn't have people helping me.
Laura:
When you learned the power of a nap in the middle of the day.
Mike McFall:
Oh, you know I nap. I nap.
Laura:
I know you nap.
Mike McFall:
I'm a powerful napper. Anyway, sorry I went on a little rant there, but I believe that.
Laura:
No, that's okay.
Mike McFall:
The organization has a responsibility to make sure life isn't awful.
Laura:
It does.
Mike McFall:
But the individual also has a responsibility to raise their hand and say, My life isn't really working that well, and what can we do about it? And then the leadership has a responsibility to put those two things together in a way that works for everybody.
Laura:
I agree. That was great.
Mike McFall:
Thank you.
Laura:
This is me clapping. I thought that was good.
Mike McFall:
[inaudible 00:27:12].
Laura:
Yeah, it might be the only time it ever happens, but no, I think that's important. And for some reason, it's really hard. I can speak as a remote employee who does work usually 40-45 hours a week. And most of that is in fact in front of a computer screen most of the time in meetings and talking to people. The hard part is everybody else. You can say, Hey, I don't think I need to be in this meeting. And one person is like, Ah, we really need you there. Or you feel like you're going to miss out on something, and you don't. Usually, it's a sign that there's mistrust between your manager and you because you either don't trust that your manager will leave you all the information or your manager doesn't trust that if you aren't in a meeting doing something that you're-
Laura:
If you aren't in a meeting doing something that you're, I don't know, not being productive or-
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:28:04]
Mike McFall:
Walking the dog.
Laura:
Right. And it's like, no, you actually-
Mike McFall:
You want to hear something funny?
Laura:
You can walk the dog, it's okay for a minute. It's fine.
Mike McFall:
I read an article the other day, it was like a Reddit post, and a guy went out middle of the day golfing and didn't tell anybody at work he was going out golfing. So he goes out and he's on the third hole and then he sees his boss and they make eye contact and they just started laughing.
Laura:
Oh my gosh. That's a good boss.
Mike McFall:
Isn't that great though? What's the boss going to say?
Laura:
You shouldn't be here even though I'm here too. Oh yeah, you're like blood brothers at that point. You're in it together.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. I thought the fact that they both started laughing was great. But, anyway. You know I've always been an advocate of you got to manage yourself and you got to manage your own. But then you also, it's about being effective. And if you're doing stuff in your day that's not effective for what you think or you and your direct report think you should be doing, then you need to change it. And you need to change it.
Laura:
Yeah. I always say you have to enlist support. You have to get someone on your team helping you say no to things. My team is wonderful at telling me to say no to things. They just don't even let me take things anymore. They're like, no. Because if I do it, I ruin it, I make it worse. And they've got all the skills and all the right things and they kick me out of meetings and I love them so much for that. So you got to enlist some help with your self-care.
Mike McFall:
Enlist. It's very Lamarckian of you.
Laura:
Yeah, I do that sometimes. So I get frustrated that good is never good enough. I'm also someone who completely lives in the realm of good is never good enough kind of thing. So I don't know what to do with this. I'm basically mad at myself. But within the context of a company, I get frustrated when a company's trying to do good and everyone wants to point out this cynical side of it and everyone wants to point out, yeah, but they didn't do this. And it's like, oh, but give them cred for trying to do that one good thing. And it just gets frustrating sometimes. This is really just a vent.
Mike McFall:
No, it's good though. Somehow that doesn't affect me too much. There are certain things that do, and you know them and you say them to me and they get underneath my skin. I mean, the one other day is somebody in the survey referred to my book as a joke, that one hurt. And I raised the flag internally on that with John and stuff. And Bob and I talked about it at some length and kind of where we settled with each other was, the book's aspirational. You're never going to get all that right for every single person. And everybody's in a different stage of development, in a different place with the company and their own...
So it's meant to be aspirational. And boy, wouldn't it be great if we got it 100% right, 100% of the time with 100% of our people. Of course, that's the goal. I mean, I think we're probably lucky to bat 50. That's probably-
Laura:
Aiming for 80.
Mike McFall:
Yeah, we should be aiming for 80. That's exactly right. We should be aiming for 80. 80% of the people, 80% of the time. That should be the goal. I've never really understood why people complain. That's just not in my DNA to complain. I don't know why, but whatever. We're trying hard and it might not work.
Laura:
That's the nuance that I can wish all day long that someone would work into a survey response is that they would both acknowledge the things that we've done, the hard work, the intention behind everything. And still that we have a long way to go because we say that too. We're never satisfied. Our company is almost problematic with as soon as we've accomplished something being like, all right, how can it be better? It's almost a problem with how much we're like that. We forget to celebrate things when they are good and it's probably just not going to happen because not a psychological thing that people are going to partake in.
Mike McFall:
Yeah, I don't know mean. There are stories though. I had somebody that would work for us for a few years came up to me, I won't mention because I don't want to disclose who that is. But basically their dad was a vice president of a well-known company, and the dad was basically saying, there's no way that shit's true. There's no way. Talking about the stuff that we were doing. And the kid was like, I think it is. I'm pretty sure it is. And he was talking about sabbatical and he was talking about the coaching, the individualized coaching, whatever. And the dad was like, no, there's no way. There's no way. It's true. And so you hear stories like that and it does feel like we are a different kind of organization than many.
And I think that for me, my whole, I want to be able to prove out that, well, I know we need to get better at what we're doing. I know that, right? There's no doubt about that. And I want to grow this company like crazy. And then I want to be able to look people in the eyeballs and say, your company will perform at an extraordinarily higher level if you believe in, implement and take the time to do the work around human-centric leadership, that that's what will get the results for your business. Period.
Laura:
One of those things is another thing on my list. One of those things that I think companies should be focused on and I think sometimes we skip over it when we're talking particularly to people in more of the conscious capitalism space, stakeholder capitalism space, which is the very fundamental, practical need that each person has to feel like they're doing a good job at their job. And this one actually came to mind because of the amount of things I Googled in the first three weeks of being a mom. And I was like, man, I'm not good at this job yet. I am in full training phase of this particular new job in my life. And at one point I was like, I hate not being good at this. That's not a comfortable place and I think that's not a comfortable place for most people. Most people don't like the training phase of anything because you like knowing what you're doing, you like knowing that what you're doing does the thing you're supposed to be doing, and you want to know that other people see that you're doing a good job and that they know what you're doing and why you're doing it.
I don't think as companies we give enough... I think we tend to sort of rest on the review process. And it's like, no, no, no. People need validation weekly that they're doing a good job at their job and not just like, you're doing a good job, generic compliments, softball compliments. But like, hey, actually that thing that you did right there, I know that was really hard, I know that was really hard work and I so appreciate that you did that and I think it's going to have this impact on the world. And we don't focus on that nearly enough, I don't think, for the amount of validation that I think would help people feel like they're thriving in their role and feel seen and feel understood and et cetera.
Mike McFall:
I mean, I have a particularly jaded approach to this topic and I work through it. I agree with you on the need for real-time specific praise, that is so important, right? What drives me crazy are the generic platitudes.
Laura:
Yeah.
Mike McFall:
Like you hear, oh, she did so amazing. I mean, that drives me crazy. And it's like I want to hear that the closing in the talk you just gave compelled me to think about this thing in a different way and I really appreciate. That to me is valuable. Telling me I did a nice job in a presentation does nothing for me. And by the way, when I get done giving a talk or speaking or whatever, 30 people walk up to me and tell me I did a great job. I mean, I didn't. I probably did a passable job if we're being honest. But what I would love is for 10 of those people to come up to me and be like, hey, this was great, but have you ever thought about maybe expanding this argument a little bit? Because I think that kind of fell short. I know not everybody has the time to do that. But you know what, if we all did it for each other a little bit it would go a long ways, but we don't. I don't know about you-
Laura:
I don't know if you... Oh, go ahead.
Mike McFall:
I don't know about you, but when's the last time someone gave you really good, strong, solid feedback?
Laura:
I don't know.
Mike McFall:
Me either. I'm telling you. Bob used to do it a lot for me, but we don't spend that much time together anymore, so I don't get much from him. Anyway.
Laura:
Yeah, it probably actually came from you on one of our walking meetings.
What I was thinking of though was, yeah, it's about engaging the work, the words. In your example of the, you did a great job in your presentation versus someone who's like, hey, have you ever thought about this? Which could almost feel critical, but it actually just feels like, oh my gosh, you listened enough to engage in this conversation with me. Once upon a time, I don't know if you remember this, you came to one of my presentations at BIGGBY Nation Summit. And I was talking about leadership things, like things you can do for your employees that is encouraging and blah, blah, blah. And one of them was like, you can tell me thanks for working hard all day long. But I said something like, if you say thank you and hand me a $5 bill, that's going to go a little bit farther. And after that talk, you came up to me and you handed me a note that said, thank you, and it had a $5 bill.
It wasn't the fact that you gave me $5, but thanks for that, but it was the fact that I was like, oh my gosh, Mike McFaul actually listened to my presentation, me an entry-level employee talking to these BIGGBY people, and the CEO of my company just actually listened to my presentation and engaged with it. That, oh, it's so powerful. Just that little touch. So, thanks for that by the way.
Mike McFall:
Yeah, I remember that.
Laura:
Oh, good. Good, good.
Mike McFall:
And I wish I did more of that today than I do. I think what you just said was it felt important to be heard. It felt important that somebody just listened. And to me, I have that feeling all the time where it's like, did anybody listen to what I just said? You don't really know. And so anyway, but I think we just keep trying. We just keep trying. We just keep working. And at the end of the day, I do believe it's all going to work.
Laura:
And then my last one... Don't worry, I'll hold onto this list because I think we could talk more about all these. But my last one is one that I actually really hope we do explore in the next season as we find more guests, more friends that are trying to do this work, or even maybe some guests or friends who want to call bullcrap on our work, that'd be exciting too. But there's this question that's been stuck in my mind. One of our employees at the home office, Kevin Mayland, asked this I think two or three years ago, and it's been in my head ever since, which is, what should a company like ours who says that our purpose is to support you in building life, you love that intends to improve workplace culture across the United States, what should the company, the living organism of the company, claim responsibility for with people?
We've also talked about there is things that are the individual's responsibility, but what is the company... What should we claim and name it and claim it? What should we be responsible for with people? Because we can't claim all of it. I don't think the company can claim my desire to be a good parent, but they can do a whole bunch of things that enable me actually being present in my daughter's life and not missing everything or something like that. I just think that's a really big topic. I'd love to explore that with you and with all of our guests next season. I think that'd be great.
Mike McFall:
I like that. I have a short answer. One, the company, the organization leadership should explore with you what your aspirations are and put together a plan to support you in fulfilling those aspirations. That's pretty much it. That's what the company needs to do in my opinion. And then there's a lot-
Mike McFall:
That's what the company needs to do, in my opinion. And then there's a lot around building a safe environment and making sure that... But anyway, there's a lot just fundamentally that an organization needs to be. But that would be my very short answer to that question.
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:42:04]
Laura:
And I want to then explore how.
Mike McFall:
What?
Laura:
How do companies do that?
Mike McFall:
Well, I mean-
Laura:
In a way that doesn't degrade the beauty. I understand the heart behind it, but how does the company systematize that in a way that's both legally safe and doesn't degrade the magic of, can't we just help people achieve their dreams? Because that's what I'd like to say.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that... How do you systematize it's one question. But I would also say that great leaders have done this for their people forever.
Laura:
Right. But individually. And we need the whole company.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. I mean, that's our work. That's what we got to do. That's what we got to figure out.
Laura:
Maybe my next thing for my list is how do we create a whole company of great leaders?
Mike McFall:
Yeah. That's a big one.
Laura:
Yeah. It's fine.
Mike McFall:
It's this idea of people that don't give, what did you say, bullcrap? Call our work bullcrap.
Laura:
Yes.
Mike McFall:
That will be the only time I say that word this year.
Laura:
If my mom listens to this podcast, I can't swear.
Mike McFall:
Oh, is that right? Okay. All right. I mean, I want to get the contrarian position. And no one's going to come on here and be like... But I would like to get the cynical voice. The voice that says, "Come on. Really?" Because I build into my keynote this moment where I talk about, "Okay, Mike. Cool. You want me to do this and you want me to do this and you want me to do this." And by the way, I'm having trouble getting people to show up to work just to show up. And then you want me to do all this stuff too. And I got to build a profitable widget or I lose my job, and you want me to spend time on all this stuff. And I'm just worried about building...
I want that voice here too, because it's real. I mean, it's very, very real. I know we have franchise owners out there that think that way in our system, and that it's super hard to find good people. And how can we possibly advocate for this concept of graduation, where you celebrate somebody leaving to pursue another opportunity that they're passionate about? And that to me, that's a real root issue inside of all of this work.
Laura:
Yeah. I think exploring that with people will be exciting. I think I'd love to-
Mike McFall:
Do you write in your notepad thing? You can share those notepads too. You could share it with me.
Laura:
I somehow could. That is probably true.
Mike McFall:
He'll help you out.
Laura:
Okay. I will write that note later. I want to explore that with people. I want to explore... There's something about the bigger the ship, the harder the turn, harder to turn or something. I shouldn't use nautical references with you because you are an actual person who knows boats.
Mike McFall:
Sort of. I mean, yeah. My dad would laugh if he heard that. He'd be like, "No, he doesn't."
Laura:
Also, I'd like to get your parents on the podcast because I love them both. You don't have to come that day, I'll just talk to them. It'll be great.
Mike McFall:
They would do that, no doubt.
Laura:
But truly, not just the bigger the ship, but old companies that are trying to change ways with so much tradition behind them. Because I know even we struggle with this. If we have something traditional, it's hard to change those traditions over time and modernize them and let go of the past. But then if it's a company like Pepsi, Pepsi has been on my mind because I listened to a Wisdom of the Top episode with their CEO, and just the amount of intention it takes to change a ginormous company. And we have the opportunity of not being ginormous yet and learning from those mistakes ahead of time and stuff. So I mean, we have lots we need to explore with people.
Mike McFall:
Yes. We do.
Laura:
Including when they want to call bullcrap on us.
Mike McFall:
Bullcrap. I think I'm going to start using that only on this podcast though. That's going to be my ode to you.
Laura:
Perfect. Thank you so much.
Mike McFall:
I'm going to use the word bullcrap.
Laura:
You got have a little swing in the bull.
Mike McFall:
The bullcrap. Yep. You got to get that. All right. Well, that's good.
So that's one thing that I am interested in, is trying to get... It's not that there's anybody who's right or wrong. I think there's people that have had a whole different experience in terms of leading and employing people. And I want to get as many of those positions in here as possible.
Because I find that situation sad. And the reason I find it sad is that there's just this really simple leap in my mind that occurs, which is, build an environment that people want to be a part of, and you're not going to have to find people, they're going to come to you. And that's just such a simple little switch, and I sort of don't understand how people don't see that switch or feel it.
Laura:
I think they see it. I think there's other priorities that get in the way. If you're panicked... It's the same thing we talk about with people where if they don't have foundational elements in place, it's too hard to build a life you love. It's the same thing I think in business where it's like if they're just trying to survive, if they're just trying to not lose their business or lose their home or lose whatever, that's all they can focus on, even though they know that if they could focus on just having a better environment, it'd be so much easier. But there's more realities to explore with people there.
I also want to explore a lot more of how other companies do this. Because I know how we're trying to do it, and that's awesome. But it's a limited view, because we only have the number of brains within our organization to try and figure this out. And I think there's other companies out there who have ideas done how to solve some of this stuff.
Mike McFall:
I want to get somebody from Zingerman's in here.
Laura:
Oh, okay.
Mike McFall:
I've advocated somebody in my family working for Zingerman's and Claba now works for them.
Laura:
Oh, does she really?
Mike McFall:
Yeah. I was like, "Hey, this company's going to be awesome. It's going to blow your mind. They're really great." And then she didn't really engage that for a hot second. And then she came home, I don't know, a month or two into her job, and she was showing me the training stuff. They don't bring you in and train you and then never talk to you again. Training is just this thing that is always occurring. Always occurring.
Laura:
Oh, of course it is.
Mike McFall:
And so she came home and they had this whole module that they wanted her to go through. And it was like, yeah, she's 60 days into the job and they're giving her something else. They're feeding her this other piece. And then, I mean...
Laura:
That's cool.
Mike McFall:
Oh, gosh. And so I think that Zingerman's, I think they believe in just really, really training their people very, very well. Making their people complete and total experts in what they do. And I'm sure there's a whole bunch more that I don't even know about.
Laura:
That's that foundational thing that people want to be good at their job. That's so cool.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. People want to be good at their jobs. I feel like I suck at my job right now.
Laura:
Would you like to explore that for a few minutes? Are you okay? You're still in this-
Mike McFall:
Well, we talked about it all day. We talked for three hours about it. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
Laura:
I mean, for our listening friends.
Mike McFall:
I'd kind of like to have you summarize why I suck at my job. How's that?
Laura:
You don't suck at your job.
Mike McFall:
Oh, yeah. There's the platitude. See that right there is the platitude. No, no, no. I'm not going to put you on the spot to do that. But I swear, right now, I'm like... I'm having a low moment. The young cycle.
Laura:
Well, we talked about those, the cycles.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. I'm in a low moment right now. I really am.
Laura:
You were in a low moment when we recorded that though, which wasn't very long ago. Is this the same low moment?
Mike McFall:
What do you mean recorded? I was talking about when we were together last week live.
Laura:
No, I know. We recorded one where we talked about you being in a down cycle too because I just listened to it the other day. So it was back in November or something.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. I mean, it's a long transition. And that's the other thing. Cycles are long. I mean, I'm learning a whole new gig in the world and it's taking a long time. Anyway, we can get into that at some point. It's not really relevant to this podcast.
Laura:
Okay. Do we have any other dreams for season two?
Mike McFall:
What's your biggest dream? If we could do one thing in season two, what would it be?
Laura:
This is Laura's competitive side coming out. I want to be sweaty nervous about a guest.
Mike McFall:
Oh, very cool. What a way to say that. That's a cool [inaudible 00:51:56]. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, mine was, I just want to make you swear one time. I want it recorded. So I just got to get that done. And I know I'm going to have to push really hard to get that done. Because you do swear. I know you don't want me to say it out loud, but I have seen you swear. And so to get you to swear on the podcast is my goal for season two.
Laura:
All right. You got to get me fired up. That's what it takes.
Mike McFall:
Sweaty nervous is a cool way to say that.
Laura:
Yeah. It'll be fun if that happens on the same episode, the sweaty nervous and the Laura drops a bomb.
Mike McFall:
It could be the same episode, yeah. I had a guy last week, I was on a guy's podcast last week. Cool situation. And it was a big compliment, because he said, "I couldn't focus on anything all morning because I was so nervous about doing this podcast with you." I know, right? I think that was cool. I was like, "I don't know what you're nervous about, but whatever."
Laura:
That's so nice.
Mike McFall:
Yeah, we had a great-
Laura:
Oh, I want to be someone's sweaty podcast guest someday. That'll be exciting. That's going in the Moonshot Guidebook.
Mike McFall:
That one is. Okay. Good. Well, we should wrap. We can ramble.
Laura:
Yeah, we should. It's been a while.
One little teaser, for those who have made it all the way in this conversation, which by the way, thanks whoever's still listening.
Mike McFall:
If you made it this far, thank you. Laura and I are enjoying ourselves at the moment.
Laura:
We're having a great time. We have one more episode for this season, but don't worry, we're going to start recording season two as quickly as we can. We're working on getting guests lined up right now.
But our last guest for the season is a friend of ours from a major shoe company, but maybe it's not a shoe company, maybe it's a customer service company. No matter what, their goal is to deliver happiness, that's your little clue. And we're very excited to get that conversation going in just a couple of weeks.
Mike McFall:
I'm not sure why we're not just saying it, but whatever. I won't.
Laura:
Because the teaser is fun.
Mike McFall:
All right.
Laura:
Because now people can figure out... We should do trivia. We should make trivia part of the pod. See if people can guess our next. Okay. You don't like that idea at all. Nevermind. We shouldn't make trivia a part of the pod.
Mike McFall:
I'm just so bad at trivia. I mean, maybe if I'm the one asking the question, trivia would be more fun. But I hate feeling dumb, and I feel so dumb when I... You ever done trivia with somebody who does trivia really well? And it's just the worst.
Laura:
I do trivia pretty well.
Mike McFall:
Do you?
Laura:
Yeah. Sorry.
Mike McFall:
I don't want to do it with you. [inaudible 00:54:24].
Laura:
I'm that person that you don't like. Okay. Well, we won't ever do trivia together.
Mike McFall:
We can do it. I can grow.
Laura:
No. We'll talk about it. We have till season two to decide. Okay. Anything else for today, Mike?
Mike McFall:
No, I'm good. Thank you.
Laura:
Okay. Love you lots. This was a lovely conversation.
Mike McFall:
I enjoyed it very much.
Laura:
Dear listener, to make sure you don't miss an episode of Love in Leadership, be sure to hit that follow button wherever you find podcasts. While you're there, do us a solid and leave us a rating or review. To follow along with Mike or I as we explore the world, follow us on our social channels at lifeyoulovelab and at Mike J. McFall.
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We love you for who you are and we'll see you next time.