A Human-Centred Global Leader in Action with WD40 CEO Garry Ridge

Welcome to the We Are Human Leaders podcast. Today we’re taking a deep dive into what being a human centred leader looks like in action.

Today’s guest is none other than CEO of Global Company WD40, Mr Garry Ridge. Garry is nothing short of an incredible Leader having lead WD40 since 1997 and transforming the companies revenue into a multi-billion dollar publicly listed company whilst keeping human beings at the central core of the companies priorities.

This conversation was nothing short of awe-inspiring as Garry left both Sally and myself with a multitude of learning moments. Garry shared his entire career history including humble beginnings to taking over the helm of WD40 n 1997 and driving it forward to the multi-billion dollar company it is today.

This conversation shines a light on the walked path of a Leader who vehemently put human beings first and at the core of all business decisions and how business has flourished as a result - Garry Ridge is a true blue print for all Human Leaders globally.

If you loved this conversation and would like to connect further with Garry and his powerful consultancy work, reach out at The Learning Moment. Find him here at LinkedIn.

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For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.

Episode Transcript:

Spk0 Alexis Spk1 Garry Spk2 Sally

[00:00:08] spk_0: Welcome to the We are Human Leaders podcast. I'm Alexis Zahner and together with my co host, Sally Clarke today we're taking a deep dive into what being a human centered leader looks like in action. Today's guest is the ceo of a global company and one that you'll all know now. Rather than give you the name of the company, I'm going to give you a riddle what's blue and yellow and lives in your garage, a tackles rust and grease without a qualm transforming squeaks and squeals into houses of calm. It comes in a compact. Can that fits right in your palm. Can you guess who I'm talking about? Today's guest is none other than Ceo of global company W. D. 40 Mr Garry Ridge. Gary is nothing short of an incredible leader having led W. D. 40 since 1997 and transforming the company's revenue into a multibillion dollar publicly listed company whilst keeping human beings at the central core of the company's priorities. This conversation was nothing short of or inspiring as Gary left by sally and myself with a multitude of learning moments. We are so excited to share this conversation with you and let's dive in. Welcome to we are human leaders Gary. It is an absolute delight to be catching up with you today all the way on the other side of the world in San Diego and before we dive into a little bit more about your work and particular in particular your role at W. d. 40. We'd love to know a bit more about you personally and the story that's brought you on the journey and the work that you're doing now.

[00:01:59] spk_1: Well thank you. It's lovely to be with you both here and having a chat with some Aussies is always fun. So I was born in Sydney. Australia, grew up in a suburb of Sydney called five doc, went to Des Moines Boys High School, started my career in retailing actually working for a retail company back then called Walton's. You guys are probably too young to remember that but um that's where they were and eventually ended up working for a wholesaling company. And my connection with W. D. 40 started in 1987 when I opened the Australian subsidiary to W. D. 40 with a fax machine under my bed. Um that's we we pulled it up from the bootstraps and uh I worked in Australia from 87 through to 94. And in 94 I was given the opportunity to move to the United States and I did that. And then in 1997 I was given the privilege to lead the company as the Ceo and W. 40 is the U. S. Public company, one of the NASDAQ stock Exchange. And You know you all know the blue and yellow can with little red top and we now market that brand in 176 countries around the world. So I often say the sun never sets on HD 40.

[00:03:14] spk_0: Yeah. Well and I can certainly speak for Australians. I don't think there's a garage in the country that doesn't have a can of HD 40 in it for everything from jam doors to you know bike wheels and these sorts of fun things. It really is the little can that can do so much.

[00:03:29] spk_1: There's always another use. That's

[00:03:31] spk_0: it.

[00:03:33] spk_2: Yeah. I think I've seen it on all of my travels, not only here in the Netherlands but specifically remember being in a garage in in Morocco when my car broke down and some WD 40 was involved in that. So certainly a global brand. Um Gary. I'm really curious you lead W. D. Forty's for some time now and would love to know how you'd characterize your individual leadership style. One of the key beliefs or methodologies that you use as a leader.

[00:04:03] spk_1: You know. Back Aristotle was born in 384 Bc. And Aristotle said pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. And I think our role as leaders is to create a place where people go to work every day. They make a contribution to something bigger than themselves. They learn something new. They're protected and set free by a compelling set of values and they go I'm happy because happy people create happy families, Happy families create happy communities and happy communities create a happy world and my goodness, we need a happy world. And unfortunately there are a lot of leadership behaviors that don't create cultures where people are valued. And so my leadership style as a servant leader, I'm here to serve. Uh and I'm here to create opportunities for people to do great work, to help them learn. Uh and to create an atmosphere where people know that they belong to one of the biggest, you know, desires we have as human beings is that the desire to belong. Unfortunately in most organizations, people don't feel like they belong. Um I wrote a book with ken blanchard, the one minute manager called helping people win at work and ken often says it's a shame that people only know they're doing a good job because no one yelled at them today. So my style is a servant leader, a balance between being tough minded and tenderhearted.

[00:05:31] spk_0: Well, there's so much that we could dive into there, isn't there? So what have you, I can see you're itching to dive into this

[00:05:40] spk_2: more. I think absolutely one of the questions that comes to mind for me is I'm really curious whether this was something that felt very evident to you early in your leadership career? Gary, was this something, this idea of servant leadership and really putting people at the center of decision making and of business. Is this something that came to you very early or has it happened over the course of your career as a leader?

[00:06:06] spk_1: Well, certainly there were, there are events in my life that really amplified the power of servant leadership and and the biggest one I guess, you know, I grew up in Australia, I always felt an affection for people, but until you actually put in a position of responsibility and you know, when you're responsible for a public company, um you know that anything you do could harm a lot of people and that really becomes clear to you. So back in 1997 when I was given the honor to lead the company as Ceo, I wasn't afraid, but I was scared that I didn't know how to create an organization that didn't rely on micromanagement that was full of people who are coaches. So I looked around and I actually went back to school, I went to the University of SAn Diego and I did a master's degree in leadership and that's in fact where I met ken blanchard, the one minute manager, he was my professor and I was then exposed to the tools to be able to be a better servant leader. So I guess I had an understanding of it, but I didn't write rightly know how to do it and 25 years on from that, which is now I say that I'm, I'm kind of been doing my apprenticeship in leadership, I'm, I'm still learning, I'm a work in progress, so, but I'm probably a little better than I was 25 years ago,

[00:07:41] spk_0: wow, there's so much to pull out of that and I think something that I find very fascinating around what you just said. Gary is that to me it sounds like this has been an ongoing learning opportunity for you and You know the instinct I think for human beings in fear which is what you suggested perhaps coming into the role in 1997, you had perhaps thoughts of how do I take care of these people? And often our natural instinct in those moments is to control everything around us. And I think that that's such a fantastic acknowledgement that not sort of succumbing to that Fear of whatever it was at the time responsibility but actually learning how to care for human beings first and foremost really was the approach that you took and and taking that as an opportunity to learn. And it goes very beautifully into my next point. And I heard you mention incredibly important words like belonging. Now w. d. 40 has a reported employee engagement rate of 93% I believe. Is that correct? Which is astronomical. So what exactly is it about your company culture that's able to have such an incredible employee engagement rate.

[00:08:53] spk_1: We are 93% employee engagement globally, 98% of our people say they love to tell people they work at the company. And here's one, here's one will blow your socks off, 96% of them say they respect their coach. Now we don't have managers in the business. We call everybody is a coach because our job is to help coach people. So there's a coaching contract if you will, I'll just touch on that quickly and I'm going to flip back to where you are and here's because it kind of helps explain this and and the coaching contract is about let's think about a great coach, a great football coach, an Australian Aussie rugby league coach, not necessarily the Queensland team, but that's okay. Um but you never see great coaches running onto the field, picking up the ball and kicking the goal. And great coaches never go to the podium to pick up the prize the job of a great coaches to stand on the sideline and observe the play and to identify ways of helping the player play a better game. The other part of what is great about coaches are the great coaches spend a lot of time in the locker room, in the locker room building, trust building camaraderie, you know, building that that circle of safety if you will. So that's the responsibility of a coach at W. D. 40 company. If you are being coached, you also have a contract with the coach. And the contract that you have is you accept the fact that the coach is there not to mark your paper but to help you get an A. So you're going to accept the opportunity to receive feedback and sometimes we may even go and ask people who are sitting in the in the stand or playing on your team to also give feedback on how you're playing. So culture in an organization is really interesting. I mentioned, I think I went to Drummond Boys High School in Sydney, I had a science teacher. The science teacher gave me a Petri dish and the science teacher said we are going to grow culture in this Petri dish. So what's important? The first thing is what are the ingredients that you would want to put in the Petri dish to grow the culture you want to grow? If you want to grow good culture, you have to put in good ingredients, no difference in building culture in a company. What are the great ingredients? You have to have a core set of values. You have to have a clear purpose. You have to have clear identification of accountability. You have to add care and candor and responsibility all of those ingredients in the Petri dish. Then what's the responsibility of the scientist? If you will the leader, they gotta watch that Petri dish every day and they've got to ensure that they love their people enough to not only applaud them and reward them for doing great work, but here's the rub. They have to be brave enough to attack change or treat toxic cultures that are entering that Petri dish because it will send it sour very quickly. So I have an algorithm that I adapted from some of Simon cynics work around culture. Culture equals parentheses values plus behavior. Close parentheses times consistency. So this is simple, not easy. Time is not your friend and you have to do a day after day after day after day. If you're going to build an enduring company over time, you have to play the infinite game. Not the finite game.

[00:12:20] spk_2: I love that Gary and what I'm really hearing as well is that it's this is very much not just something that culture is not something that we just talked about that we theorize about that we talked about in boardrooms or we have framed on the wall but it really is about the behaviors and that sense of accountability and almost the day to day lived experience that people have working at the company. And I'm really curious to understand The value that having such a high employee engagement rate brings to WD 40 and I'm talking above and below the

[00:12:53] spk_1: line. Well, you know what it brings is a very high retention rate. A lot of people enjoying what they're doing and Here's two things that you need in business that are important. You need strategy. Okay, so what's your strategy and and you know, we can probably develop a pretty good strategy and let's take it over to some smart university professor and get them to mark it up and they might say, Okay, your strategy, you get 70 out of 100 most strategies are probably wrong and roughly right. You know, they're they're not perfect. But the other thing you need is the will of the people. So let's say that you've got a strategy that's marked up at 70, but only 20% of your people go to work every day and are engaged working towards a purpose, enjoying their work, develop them themselves. 20 times 70 is 1400. There's your output. But what about 80% of your people go to work every day and are highly engaged, loving their work, getting rewarded, feeling like they're appreciate 80 times 70 is 5600. So I think it's pretty simple. You can have the best strategy in the world. But if people aren't helping you execute that strategy in an abundant way, you're not going to maximize your output. It's pretty simple to me will other people times strategy equals output. So, you know, having that kind of a culture internally. It's interesting that, you know, we do our employee opinion surveys every two years, so we did one right at the beginning of Covid not knowing that Covid was coming in March 2020 we got all the results in and the numbers were great and there's always areas for us to improve and, you know, we share the results with everybody and say, this is what you said, how are we going to make it better? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we then Covid hit. So about January of 20, I said we need to go and do an interim check in to see if we're draining cultural equity. I didn't think we were, we were in contact with our people. We were tuned in. You know, our E. Q. Was on high alert. We were doing a lot of things to keep the cement together to bond the people together in this really crazy time. We did the survey and one number came back higher than the number before. And that number was 98% of our people said they were excited about the company's future. Now let me tell you when this was, this is January 2021, there was no vaccine yet. This the future was totally uncertain. Why were people saying they were excited about the future. So we we did a little digging into that and here's what they told us. If we can get through this together, we can get through anything together because we are living our promise to each other and our promises, a group of people that come together to protect and feed each other. So there's, you know, a lot of people say there is no place I would rather be right now as as where I have to go to work in here because I'm respected. I'm taking care of. You know, we were and we were having, we made a point of still having fun because life you've got to have fun. So on the bottom line in the last 25 years we've had a compounded annual growth rate of total shareholder return of about 15% of the year. Our market cap went from about $300 million to 2.5 billion U. S. Dollars. We've nearly six X tower revenue. We've expanded in. You know we selling 176 countries around the world. Now we have offices in 17 countries around the world and at the end of the day, what do we do? We sell oil in the can ha ha ha no we don't. Our purposes, we exist to create positive lasting memories, solving problems in factories, homes and workshops around the world. If you ask us what business we're in, we're in the memories business. Our second value of the company is we we we value creating positive lasting memories in all of our relationships.

[00:17:04] spk_0: Incredible. I almost need to pause for a moment to take in everything you've just said. Gary. And something that feels so powerful to myself and sally in the work that we do at human leaders is helping what you've just done so eloquently for us is connected the dots between business strategy and the importance of people being part of that strategy and basically being the common denominator in business that we always need to come back to And you know, we can only be as great as the sum of those parts. And and you've just so eloquently showed us how HD 40 really focuses on that and is able to do that through that focus on people. And I want to come back to another sort of tying it all together and coming back to this Petri dish analogy that you mentioned earlier and the idea of what you put in is basically what you'll be able to grow and get back out. And you mentioned this idea of toxic culture um perhaps toxic behavior and the thought of, you know, putting in crappy ingredients into that Petri dish is going to grow something and I can I know where you're going with this, I can see you on screen holding up your little cranky manager man. Now I want to know Gary from you. What are some of the typical leadership behaviors that you've identified as being detrimental? And how do you pull that toxicity out of that Petri dish? To stop it Infecting the culture at WD 40?

[00:18:30] spk_1: So he just snuck into the frame because he heard you talking about this is this is al the soul sucking ceo

[00:18:40] spk_0: For those who can't see Gary, he's holding up a little, almost like a voodoo doll that has, does it have type a written on the front of it? Oh gosh, I feel like I'm being called out.

[00:18:50] spk_1: Let me tell you, let me give you gals behaviors, right? Al is a master of control. He's a know it all, he has all the answers, he thinks he's corporate royalty. Al has spent his life climbing the corporate ladder. He shall be respected and bowed down to Al will have his own personal parking spot. Probably a very large office. Probably spends very little time in the locker room with with the team. He thinks learning is for losers. Does al um you know, why should anybody have to learn anything? Just come and ask Alan if he's right? He's always right and if he's wrong, he's always right. So just ask Al Al's ego. It's his empathy. Instead of his empathy, eating his ego. It's all about me, me, me, me, me. Um He's he's he must always be right. Never disagree with him. He loves a fear based culture because he rules by fear. He thinks micromanagement is essential. This owl has to add too much value to everything. He never follows through on his commitment. And Al hates feedback. Al hates feedback. Now, if we want to look at our who isn't our what is the servant leader? The servant leader loves and involves their people. They're always in servant leadership mode. They're expected to be competent. They are connected with high emotional intelligence. They love learning moments. They have a heart of gold and a backbone of steel. They're champions of hope. They know micro management is not scalable. They always follow through on their commitments and do what they say they're going to do and they treasure the gift of feedback

[00:20:31] spk_0: mm Well. Gary one Word. I just heard you mention that I would love to just get your thoughts on for a moment and that is the word competent. So I heard what I think I heard was al is perhaps competent but is more ego based versus a servant leader is competent. If we're not a know it all, what does that look like? Can you explain to me this concept of competency in our versus the servant leader?

[00:20:59] spk_1: So 13 of the most powerful words I ever learned in my life where I don't know and and getting very comfortable with being able to say, you know what I don't know. I don't have all the answers but I tell you what together we can I have a level of I have some level of competency I guess but there I don't know it but if we can get together to understand and to learn, you know when I when I was in Australia, when I was a young boy in primary school I used to come home every afternoon and there used to be a tv show with a mad, I call him a mad scientist. He wasn't really, his name was dr Julius Sumner miller and in fact he was famous for the cab berry chocolate ads where they used to say a glass and a half of full cream milk and he used to do these experiments and he do on the tv show and he wore a white jacket and hat curly sort of hair and he do funny thought of sort of things like sucker boiled egg into a bottle you know as an experiment but at the end of every experiment he'd say and why is it so why is it so? So I think leaders have to firstly get comfortable saying I don't know and they have to get comfortable with saying why is it? So that's why we we don't make mistakes at W. D. 40 company. Now here's here's something that will floor you. I have never ever ever ever ever made a mistake in my life.

[00:22:30] spk_2: So I'm feeling like there's a little bit of a contradiction in terms almost here. Gary because you just said you're very confident in saying having the humility to say I don't know and you're also saying you've never made a mistake. So I feel like there might be something about the definition of mistake that we need to delve into here. Can you unpack that for us?

[00:22:49] spk_1: So here's the setup, here's the setup. What I what I have had in my life is millions of of learning moments. So what we did is we took the word mistake out and said we are not going to use the word mistake or failure because fear is a absolute you know killer of of of enthusiasm but what we say is we have learning moments and a learning moment is a positive or negative outcome of any situation that needs to be openly and freely shared to benefit all people. That's our definition. So I haven't made mistakes but I've had millions of learning moments and an abundance of negative ones I must tell you and some positive ones. But without identifying that learning you get from that you don't get the value out of the experience. See education is when you read the fine print experiences, when you don't, when you put both of those together, you get learning from learning, you gain knowledge and from knowledge, you gain wisdom. So it's all about the competency side of education, the experimental side of of learning and both of those give you the knowledge to be able to have the experience that you need.

[00:24:08] spk_2: I love that. I think that's such a beautiful way of framing it and such an empowering way of framing it as well because it really allows us to sort of to own those moments rather than have maybe a shame or sort of a fear reaction to them. I just want to dig in a little bit also a couple of things that you've mentioned and I was just thinking a little bit more about our friend owl and um how we often I think have this idea that those kind of leaders who are micro managers who are very demanding, who are very sort of control focused. They I think traditionally have been seen as quite courageous as they position themselves as having this kind of bold and and fearlessness around them when in fact a lot of their behavior is very fear driven and you mentioned the word earlier and that was love loving your employees and I think that's connected to the idea of servant leadership was running. If you could speak to that a little bit for us, that sort of difference between fear driven and love driven leadership.

[00:25:03] spk_1: So there's a guy by name of bob chapman who was ceo of a company called barry Wine Miller in the US and he made a wonderful comment. He said, everybody who comes to work every day in your company is someone's precious child, I would say everyone is someone's precious child, husband, wife, uncle auntie daughter's son or whatever. So why wouldn't we want to embrace them and give them the love that they need now, you know, the word love, everybody gets, you know, it's not about kumbaya singing on a friday afternoon, right? It's love comes with respect. You know, when I talk about care and Canada, I talk about Canada, there's no lying, no faking, no hiding. I believe most people don't lie. I believe they fake and hide because they have fear and the fear is caused by the behaviors of our so if people fake and hide how are we going to to flourish? We can't. So again, you know, I I think, you know, you still have to remember I said you have to have a heart of gold in the backbone of steel, you know, don't you know, there's tough decisions to be made sometimes and you have to make them, but that doesn't mean, you know, you you can do it by saying I mean you no harm. Um, so I think it's about, you know, life is a gift. We can't send it back unwrapped. So let's help people unwrap

[00:26:32] spk_0: it. Oh wow. Gary. That is so powerful. And to your point around this idea of people, you know, wanting to lie or not wanting to lie inherently, but wanting to avoid perhaps speaking truth if they feel like, and I think it comes into almost like our childhood instincts of wanting to be loved and feeling that love might be conditional if we make mistakes or if we tell truth or if we make other people uncomfortable. And I think when we look at it through that lens, it's such a compassionate way of viewing other human beings and a way for us to understand how their own innate needs can actually be met at least partially through how we treat one another at work. And I just think that's so powerful. And the next the next question we wanted to talk about here was really around this concept of employee happiness, but I almost want to challenge the word happiness in this moment because I think it speaks more to almost employee contented Nous. You know, happiness is a fleeting thing and I think what I've heard you say through the course of this conversation is it's not about having employees happy every day at work, it's helping them feel meaning and belonging and connection and potentially contented Nous, which means becoming comfortable on the days where things feel yucky and hard and uncomfortable and perhaps angry and sad and I'd love to know a little bit more about this and I think, you know, you've mentioned this concept of love, but we, what are some of the other key ingredients that you put into that Petri dish of WD 40 that help you create that sense of employees coming to work and feeling meaning and contented nous in the way they work.

[00:28:15] spk_1: So you know, how often do leaders walk up to someone and say, are you okay? Just never are you okay? You know, Simon Sinek tells a wonderful story about, let's say you've got someone that um is not meeting their sales target three months in a row. So option a, you go into the into to visit with them and you have a conversation that basically sounds like you're not meeting your sales target, you know, you're a lazy S O b blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that person is totally enthusiasm is just drained out of them, but what happens if you went and you said sally, you know, you're not ending your sales targeted. Are you okay? Is are you is everything okay? What what what what can I do for you that can help you? So again, it's getting back to this just wanting to have a true desire to help people be who they want to be. You know, I have a little a little posted. No. Well you might say I have lots of post it notes around me here and who would think that a guy who's been the ceo of a public company needs to have all these reminders around him. But I do because as human beings, we're just these basic human beings bumbling our way down the pathway of life. And what happens in leadership? There's these bushes along the pathway and there's these these evil things hiding in the bushes and they come out and grab us. There's one of greed that comes out and grabs us and and you know, ego grabs us and the environment drags us in and we suddenly are in this place we don't want to be. So I have this one of the post it notes I have on my computer here is it says, am I being the person I want to be right now? I have to remind myself consistently. I've got it on my little note pad over there that I carry it and it says, and who is that person. And I have some words about this is the person I want to be. I want to be grateful. I want to be caring. I want to be empathetic. I want to be reasonable. I want to be a listener. I want to be fact based. I want to have a balanced opinion. I want to be curious, I want to be a learner and I want to throw sunshine, not a shadow. Now, I have to remind myself of that because the world will impact me in different ways. You know, I I need to be, you know, I was driving through Starbucks on my way to the office this morning and a couple of mornings ago someone paid for my coffee and this morning I thought I'm going to pay for the person's coffee behind me and I don't know who that person is, but I'm thinking it through a little sunshine to them because when that person did it for me it through a little sunshine, that's okay, $4.95 for a cup of coffee, that's expensive coffee. But anyhow, um you know, it it's that sort of reminder that we have to think about. Um and the other thing that leaders struggle with is just letting things go, you know, we have to ask ourselves two questions, do what I did, I do what I thought was right and did I do my best and if the answer to that is yes and yes, you have to go, I have to let it go, that's all I can do. Um and that's I think that's important,

[00:31:37] spk_2: amazing points in both both points, I think Gary, especially the first one that you speak to about having that sort of constant reminder of you know, am I being the person that I want to be and who is that person I think is there is such a powerful way of sort of drawing us back into the present moment because I think often as as a leader, as a human being, it's so easy to get distracted by all kinds of things that are going on and holding multiple things at once. And for me, I often notice a real thing for me is if I if I suddenly slip into using a lot of jargon that for me is okay, I'm not in the present moment anymore, I'm not speaking my true language here, step back and come back into my own language. Um and certainly as a former lawyer, there's a lot of legalese that you can get caught up in. Um, so I think that for me is a really powerful way of connecting back into the present moment so that you are able to be the empathetic, kind, you know, fun sunshine throwing individual, the person that you are. And it also speaks to the fact I think for me that it's this is an ongoing journey, you've been, you know, this leader of this incredible organization for so long and practicing this day in day out and still beautifully telling us you use these reminders constantly and I think that's a real lesson for all of us to take that. It's not a it's not a one and done. It's not a switch that you flick and it's good. It is an ongoing practice of leadership and self leadership.

[00:33:06] spk_1: It's perpetual in nature, definitely, you know, and and why don't you reminded me about language? You know, one of the things that al does he camouflage is issue with confusion to make out how smart he is. And you know, I've been in meetings with people who who do that and and it's like, you know, you're not that smart. I mean, just let's just be simple, you know, things you don't have to overcomplicate things, let's just be simple

[00:33:37] spk_2: and Gary. I'd love to know just a slight pivot. Now, we're really curious whether you believe that business can be a vehicle for global change. You're leading this global company and you've seen incredible growth in the time that you've been at its helm And so understanding whether you really see that business has that capacity to be a vehicle for global change and if so, how do you and the WD- 40 team put this into action.

[00:34:06] spk_1: Business must be a force for good in the world, There is no doubt about that. We touch more people every day in business than anybody else touches and by creating a culture where you can send people home happy and contented. That's how we can start and you know, I've said, as I said, I spent my last 25 years doing my apprenticeship in leadership and I am so passionate about this. As I stepped down as Ceo at the end of august, I am going to be pushing my my consulting business, which is called the culture coach. Uh and I want to talk to more and more leaders. I teach at a, you know, a couple of universities here, I do podcasts like this uh and it's not about the money. I mean I just believe that this is a calling and I can call Bs because we've done it. You know, if leaders tell me this doesn't work, I can say, can I, would you mind if I just show you some some real results over 25 years and you know, so I think business must be a force for good in the world, who else is going to do it? It's not government, it's not religion, it's who else is going to do it? We can do it. We've just got to play the infinite game and you know, treat people well and build cultures where people are really able to nurture and nourish and grow

[00:35:33] spk_0: here Gary and what I appreciate most about what you've just said is that I think we really complicate this idea of how we be a vehicle for good in the world, particularly organizations. I think, you know, there's obviously corporate social responsibility and all of the sort of initiatives and incredible things we can do to have impact in the world. But what I've just heard you really mention is that it really does start with the culture and then the ripple effect that by just treating human beings as human beings and giving them what they need in their most innate needs, belonging meaning purpose. Love, we actually, the ripple starts just by treating them differently, and then that's how our culture then ripples out into the world as a force for good. And I think that is so empowering because I think it sort of demystifies what it means to be a vehicle for good in the business world.

[00:36:29] spk_1: And when you think about it, you know, there are a lot of stakeholders in business, right? And I like to think of stakeholders as anyone without whom we may not exist, right? That's so when we think about it, who are the stakeholders, our people, our customers, our investors, mother nature as a stakeholder, our community as a stakeholder. So, you know, we need to look at all of the stakeholders that if we didn't have their support, we wouldn't exist. And if we ignore any of those stakeholders, we're going to not have the opportunity to make the difference we need. So we've got to look at all the stakeholders in our business and I love the definition of stakeholders because, you know who who if we didn't have their support, would we likely not exist as an organization And there it's not it's not just the shareholders.

[00:37:24] spk_0: Absolutely. Which typically I think takes a lot of preference. So I appreciate you acknowledging that for us and To really round out our conversation here today. Gary, I think that sally and I can both agree and I'm sure everyone listening to this conversation is probably going to have to listen to this episode more than once to take all of the nuggets of wisdom out of it that we've heard. But I'd love to hear from you and perhaps the advice that you would have given to Gary in 1997, perhaps someone in the fledgling moment of their leadership career who's consciously wanting to shift to a more human centric way of leading others, what advice would you give a human starting on this journey to shift to a servant leadership mode or a human leadership mode of being?

[00:38:15] spk_1: I'll share two things. Number one, it's not about you, It's not about you. And number two, I'll share with you something I read In a corner 747 in 1990 six, probably somewhere between Los Angeles, Sydney and Los Angeles and I was reading some of the work of the Dalai Lama and here's what I read our purpose in life is to make people happy if we can't make them happy, at least don't hurt them. And that was the catalyst to my thinking about by looking around and seeing business leaders who are hurting people. And I said, you know what? There's got to be a better way. We have to find a better

[00:39:00] spk_2: way. I think that those are beautiful words to leave us with Gary and it really resonates with. I think so many of the things that you've told us throughout this conversation, including things like treating people with this innate sense of trust and respect. For example, you know, you gave the example of this sales manager who's coming down on someone like a ton of bricks because they haven't hit their quarterly targets. And, you know, coming to someone and asking, are you okay? Actually says, I trust you in your role, I trust you to do to hit those targets so I can tell that something's not right here, let's have a chat about it. And that I think is that, um, where that sort of like, you know, not harming wanting to support really comes in. You've given us so much wisdom, so much to think about and to me personally, a great deal of inspiration through this conversation, we're so grateful for your time. Thank you so much.

[00:39:53] spk_1: Thank you. Thank you. There's one thing I'll add, I just remembered if I may,

[00:39:57] spk_2: of course you

[00:39:58] spk_0: can.

[00:39:59] spk_2: So

[00:40:01] spk_1: one of the great ways that you use values in organizations is to give people feedback. And you reminded me of this real story. I was in a meeting at one time and it was early in one morning and our second value in the companies, we value creating positive lasting memories in all of our relationships. And there was someone in that meeting that was not creating positive lasting memories. They were having a really bad morning. So what do you do as a leader? This is true. This is an example. Number one is you could you know, call the meeting, give them some feedback in the meeting which probably doesn't feel good for them or the people in the room number two you do nothing. Number three what about if you've got some values that you can rely on? So at the end of the meeting I said to this person sally let's go for a walk. So we walked out of our building and I looked under a car and I was looking behind a tree and I was looking in a garbage can and sally says what the hell are you doing? I said I'm looking for you sally, what do you mean? I said sally the you I know and Love was not in that room today. What's on your mind And that gave us the opportunity to have that conversation to do that little bit of coaching Sally had had a bad morning and we talked it through and at the end of the meeting sally went back inside and and visited some of the people and said, hey sorry, you know that wasn't me today and they said we know it wasn't you sally you okay? You okay? Is anything we can do for you? Are you okay the next morning I noticed them going to sally saying is everything okay today Sally? That's the way that you build trust, love appreciation in the business because people, if they're not behaving in the way you are, used to them behaving something's going on, something's going on.

[00:41:44] spk_0: Well Gary, thank you so much. That is just an ego list moment as a leader. It is the antithesis of Taipei Al we appreciate you imparting your incredible knowledge, expertise and wisdom with us today at we are human leaders. Thank you so much.

[00:42:06] spk_1: You're welcome. Thanks for inviting

[00:42:08] spk_0: me. This episode was full to the brim with learning moments. Gary was so gracious with his knowledge and expertise. And if you're anything like sally and I you're going to need to repeat this podcast a few times to get the full magnitude of learning moments out of it, to connect with Gary and learn more about his incredible consultancy work. Find him at the learning moment dot net. And if you're ready to take ownership for evolving your leadership style in your life and in your workplace we invite you to join us at www dot we are human leaders dot com. We'll see you next episode