Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is the Lane Stock, the CEO of ServiceMaster. There's an old adage I'm sure you've heard. The only way to gain control is to give up control. And if you've ever run a business or let a team, you know how true that statement is. And you also know how hard it can be to actually give up control. But if we want our companies to grow, we have to get comfortable trusting our partners and team members and allowing them to do their part in building the business. What you're going to hear in this episode is how Lane has learned to give up control while running a franchise system where her company owns the brands and the franchise es run and own their independent businesses. But I guarantee you one thing, whether you're struggling to give up control running a large business with franchisees or simply running a small team, I know there's a lot you'll learn from today's episode. Here's the thing, the great leaders I know are comfortable giving up control. It's the only way to get people inspired and grow a business. Let's get right to it. Here's my conversation with my friend and soon to be yours, Elaine Stock. You know, Elaine, I can't wait to get into how you go about leading. But first, tell us a little bit about ServiceMaster. What are you up to these days? ServiceMaster is a great company. It's a 92-year-old company and it's, I like to call it a new 92-year-old company because about a year ago, we were carved out of a bigger public company and became a standalone business and where the leader in home services were also the leader in commercial services in terms of providing restoration services or cleaning services across a variety of different customers and consumers. So it's a great business with some great brands, including ServiceMaster Restore, ServiceMaster Clean, Two-In-A-Truck and Marymates. So we're excited to be up and running on our own and being able to serve customers in their times of need. Elaine, when we first met, you were in the midst of a distinguished career at Kimberly Clark and you'd risen to the group president level. You're running their international business and I've just written a new book called Take Charge of You, You Know How Self-Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career. And I like to get into how people think. Tell us how you self-coached to make your move from Kimberly Clark to become the CEO of ServiceMaster. Well, actually, I took a different path. It wasn't a direct move. I went from Kimberly Clark, had a terrific career there and a lot of fun and had joined the Young Brands Board, as you know, as a part of that when I was still with Kimberly Clark leading their international business. And I actually decided it was time to take some meat on my kids. We're getting older and I wanted to make sure that I had some time with them before that after school. And I really enjoyed the board work. So I actually took a couple of years and served on public company boards. As a part of that, I'd gotten to know some folks in the private equity world with Work Capital. And they approached me with the idea of joining ServiceMaster Brands as the CEO . And at first, I told them no. And they came back again. And the second time I told them no. And then the third time it was as they described the opportunity to me even more. It seemed like something that was too good to pass up. It's just such a hidden gem within the services world and an opportunity to really start fresh in terms of leading a team and building a new culture and setting a vision and direction for growth that it was just too exciting to pass up. That's always a blast when you can go into a situation and treat it like a startup, which seems to be your approach here. So this is really your first CEO job. How did you go about establishing yourself as the new leader? And tell us how you spent your first 100 days. I spent a lot of it talking to customers and franchisees. We are a franchise business and it's important to make sure that those franchise owners are being heard and that I understand what their needs are. They're critical partners in terms of our success in the marketplace. And I wanted to make sure that we had a good understanding of what their needs were and what had gone well in the past. And I also got an earful in terms of what hadn't gone well in the past. So that was a really important piece of it. And then I also spent time standing at my team. We were headed in a whole new direction in terms of being a growth company, in terms of being really focused on franchisees success and really wanted to up our game . So that took some changes in my team. It took some opportunities for growth for others on my team. So that was a big piece of it. And then the third thing was what you've already mentioned in terms of really building a culture. How do you take a 92 year old company and make it feel new and make that entrepreneurial culture be one that's really going to drive the business for the future? How do you do that Elaine? Well, I called my good friend David Novak. You helped us with that David. You were so kind to work with us with our top 30 folks and talk about what it was like when you started the young brands or when it was tri-con when it spun out from PepsiCo. So that was a good lesson for us and a great example of how to make that work. But it was about instilling vision and dreams and having folks articulate what they wanted the company to be when it grew up as a way to help them to get excited about the role that they could play in it. You mentioned that you worked through a nationwide group of franchisees and you went out and you listened to them. What was the state of the relationship the company had with the franchisees? When you first came on board? It was rough. Like I say, it's a 92 year old company. It's been franchised for most of those years, but it had been owned by a publicly traded company that hadn't had a lot of experience in franchising. They'd spent more focus on their company owned operations. And so really hadn't had that franchise touch or that understanding of what the owner mentality would be for the franchisees. So it was rough. Like I say, I got an earful as I went around and talked to folks and took a lot of notes about what the things were that were broken in their minds, where the investments hadn't happened that they felt that they should. But even more so, where the trust was broken. It's a company that's got a deep culture and a very high standard of integrity and values. You've got to be able to look across the table and feel like the person's working with you not against you. And that was a feeling they hadn't had for a long time. Our number one priority was reestablishing that trust. What would be one or two things that you did to really show the franchisees that it was going to be a new day and that you truly trusted them and that they could be partners with you? David, two things come to mind. One is the communication part of it is listening and talking and being willing to say what we were going to do and what we weren't going to do and having an open honest conversation to understand the concerns and the needs and being able to have that dialogue. The second was it's not a secret here is do what you say you're going to do. So I was very clear about here are the things that we're going to do in the first year and then gave them updates on a quarterly basis on our progress against those. So I think those two things in particular really helped to reestablish them with that trust and belief that we were going to be working together as opposed to against each other. You know, Elaine, from my experience, it takes a rare breed for someone to be able to work effectively with franchisees because you don't really own the physical assets themselves. You don't really own the customers. You have to work through the franchisee who has that direct contact with the customer. And, you know, so many CEOs that I talked to, you know, they love having 100% control of everything. You know, was it hard for you to be able to accept that you didn't have that control and that you had to work through that intermediary? No, it wasn't. I actually loved it. That was one of the big appeals of the company and the job was I love talking to owners. These are folks whose lives and their livelihoods are the work that they do every day. And the way that they think about their businesses and how invested they are in it, that passion is really hard to match with somebody that's, you know, working for the man. And these folks that are paying their mortgages and sending their kids through school and creating opportunities for their community and people in their communities, that passion and desire and commitment, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Yeah, I always felt that way too when I was working with the KFC Taco Bell and Pizza franchisees. They have an innate gut instinct about what's right and they care about the business. And if you can tap into that, that gives you a lot more know-how. How do you spread the know-how that you pick up from franchisees from one part of the country to the other? It's still a work in process. You know, we here at our franchise support center do have a set of folks who are tasked with that to try to understand what the best practices are and to develop the right training programs, the right capability programs, the right technology to support those pieces. It's still a work in process though, right? We're a year long on the journey and we're getting better every day, but we've still got a ways to go. You know, I saw where you recently acquired two men in a truck, which I love that brand name. I see those trucks, I think it's great. You know, but I always love to get in how a leader thinks about making a big decision like that. Tell us your thought process and you know, why did you buy this company? And two men in a truck is a fantastic company. It was founded by a woman Mary Ellen Sheets and there really were two men in a truck. Her two college age sons had come home for the summer and she insisted that they needed to have a way of making their spending money. So they took their truck and started moving folks. And what she found was once they went back to college, the phone kept ringing. So she had it, they had built up a customer base and a set of a reputation that she felt like she could make a business out. And she's developed a terrific business and we had a wonderful opportunity to get to know some of the members of the family and at the time that was right for them to make sure that we could pass it off to hands that they could trust. And you know, making the decision on about it, first of all, it has to be on strategy. It fits with our overall push to be leaders in residential and commercial services in a franchise fashion, their franchise business overall. They are the leader in the moving space and that's what we look for. More importantly though, is we look for do they have strong customer service and a culture around customer service? Do they have a strong brand and brand name? And do they have a real care and value for their people? You know, my belief is you can fix the technology, you can fix the marketing, you can fix lots of other things. But if you've got a company that's broken in terms of its core around the customer, the brand and the people, that's really hard to fix. So and they checked all of those boxes with lots of great experiences and a great franchise network. So it became a pretty easy decision for us to bring them into the fold. You know, I read a little bit about the deal you made and I noticed that you actually made donations to two of their charities as part of the deal. Sometimes little things like that you do, you throw into the pot kind of make the deal happen. Tell us about that. Was that a big thing or a little thing or was it just something that said you were some patico or tell us about why you did that? Well, we actually did that after the deal was finalized. So that wasn't part of the consideration for the deal set, but it was so aligned with the values that we have as service master brands. One of our core values is caring about our people and caring about our communities and also very aligned with two men in a truck. They've been very involved in their communities and one of the charities in particular, it had been one that they'd been supporting across their franchise network for many years. So so it was a way for us to say thank you to the owners for entrusting us with this great business, but also a way for us to indicate to the people, to the team members that those were values that we at Service Master held to and that we were going to continue that. You know, I think I have this right, but you have, I think six brands in your portfolio. How do you go about allocating your time? Well, you know, David, I wish there were a method to the madness. You know, obviously I spend more time on the bigger brands, but it's really about flowing to where the need is. You know, I'm fortunate to have great brand leaders and they're also very transparent in terms of when they need help and when they don't need help. So part of what I try to do is to have a regular rhythm of processes that, you know, kind of keeps the pulse of the business, whether it's the monthly check-ins on the financial results and the progress on key initiatives, but then also to have, you know, sometimes set aside with each of the leaders on an ongoing basis where they can, you know , raise hot topics or issues or we can talk about some of the more strategic ones that may take, you know, a period of months for the right course of action to evolve. So I try not to whipsaw between things and I try to make sure that we've got a standard cadence for those touch points, but to use that as the way to engage on both the hot topics that are coming up, but also the proactive engagement on the more strategic ones. When you have a portfolio with that many brands, there's obviously going to be some that are really growing and some that are maybe struggling a little bit. And you're a really terrific strategic thinker and, you know, you act on that strategy. What do you think are the keys to really fueling a growth brand? What do you do when you have that growth brand? How do you put the accelerator down even more? You know, that's one of the things that was attractive about Service Master Brands is that we have so many growth opportunities across all of our brands, truthfully. You know, I worked in consulting for many years and sometimes some of my clients would be, you know, scratching the bottom of the barrel to try to find out ways to grow or would have to, you know, make a new acquisition into a new segment or industry in order to find growth. We've actually got more opportunities than we can possibly digest in any particular time. So it's more about being selective about those growth opportunities. And what we're really looking for, what are the things that are going to build the business for the future? I don't want a particular growth opportunity that's only going to deliver me some e-bada or for that matter, only deliver me some system-wide sales without having a real benefit for the owners. It's got to be good for the owners as well as for us. And being able to sort those and prioritize those based on value at stake, but even more importantly, the capabilities that we can bring to it. We don't like it when it happens, but, you know, every now and then we do have a brand that goes awry, it's struggling. What have you learned about what it takes to take a struggling brand and pull it out of the ditch and get it going again? It's a lot about leadership, right? Because you know, you're going to have to have folks that are excited about the future and can really set a dream and a path for what the vision of that business must be. And then it's about making hard choices, right? Sometimes the reason why brands struggle is because they haven't made the hard choices along the way. I learned pretty early in my career that hard choices are a little bit like soft cheese. They get stinkier the longer that you let them set. You're better off making those hard choices early so that you can focus on those things that are really going to feel the business and drive the growth. You know, looking back, you know, could you tell us a story about a hard choice that you've had to make on a brand or a particular situation? Yeah, I mean, there's some of them have been successful and some of them have one of the ones that was not particularly successful. I'll tell you a story about that. It's when I was at Kimberler Clark. We actually had an opportunity to launch some innovation in one of our personal care products. And it was, you know, it had tested really well. It had piloted really well. We were just over the moon in terms of what we thought that the opportunity would be and really had pended in for a big part of our growth path for the next few years. And as a result, put in, you know, a big chunk of capital investment in order to try and to help it to succeed in that way. The thing that was interesting about it though was even though it was a better product with a better customer experience from all of the research that we did, and certainly in our own minds, it required changing consumer behavior. And what we found after we put a lot of money in the ground on this was consumers weren't that anxious to change their behavior. So it actually ended up being a big bust. And it really taught me that if you think you can influence consumers, you're probably fooling yourself. You kind of have to let the consumer lead you rather than trying to lead the consumer. So again, that was going to the consumer and understanding where they're headed or the customer and where they're headed and what their needs are from their perspective is the place to start in terms of thinking about the growth opportunities. Yeah, it's really tough because so many times we get excited about an idea from our perspective. How do you go about making sure that you flip the switch and you really get inside of the customer's heads versus like, hey, I'm Elaine Stock. I had this great idea. I know it's going to be super. Well, you know, when I was at Kimberly Clark, a consumer oriented business, says I did lots of consumer home visits. And I always wanted to be careful not to take a particular anecdote and extrap olate it to a broader system. So you need to do it with some more extensive quantitative research, but being able to see the consumers and how they use the products and how they think about it and what they worry about. You know, if you're talking to a mom in Vietnam who's got three kids running around of which two are in diapers and you're seeing how she's living with it and how she's interacting with her kids and what other challenges she's got in terms of dinner or job or other interactions, those are all pieces that really help to frame what that consumer experience is and where they're coming from. Because any particular service or product we might offer a consumer is part of a much bigger tapestry of what's going on in their lives in that particular moment and day. So that's a piece that I always tried to stay close to understanding what's going on with the consumers. How have you brought that kind of consumer-centric thinking into Service Master ? Again, still a work in process. We have done a lot of work in terms of understanding our customer journeys and how they make the decisions and what's going on in their minds around the piece of it. But again, this is where our owners have such a rich base of knowledge because they're interacting with the customer every day and being able to talk to the owners about what they're seeing from the customers is a really key piece of it. When you think about that customer journey, really understanding how they make the decision, is there been anything that you've done in your career where it's helped you get to that point the most? Because all of us, we've got to really understand why customers are acting the way they do and why they're picking certain brands or what's keeping them from coming to us. Do you have any secret sauce in that area besides going into the home? Only I did. This is also a place, David, where I do think there's a role for the try things and fail fast and see what works. I remember I was visiting with Bomb Kim, who was the CEO of Koopang. Koopang is the Amazon in Korea and really took a strong position to own mobile online with their offering. I remember talking with him and touring with him. He said about there are two types of doors. They're the doors that when you walk through them, if you like what you see, you can stay. If you don't like what you see, you can turn around and go back through the door. Then there are other doors where you walk through them and they slam shut behind you and they're locked and you can't go back through the door. Most doors are two-way doors. Most of them don't slam shut and lock. His perspective was just try some stuff and see how it works and make the decision quickly about whether what you see on the other side of the door is working or not and go back through it if you need to. That's always really stuck with me in terms of how to think about what some of the opportunities might be and how to explore some of these pieces because you can't figure it out sitting in your office for sure. That is absolutely right. You now are in charge of a company that's been around for 92 years and so your brands have been established for a long time. How have used technology to impact the business? Well, we're continuing to grow that. Our technology is particularly focused on how do we improve the customer experience and how do we improve the franchisee experience. As a new company with a carve out, we're setting up all brand new systems as a part of that. It gives us a great opportunity to really use more of a white sheet of paper to try and understand what those opportunities can be. It's different for our B2C customers versus our B2B customers. Really getting underneath those customer journey aspects and how can technology can enable them is going to be a critical piece of our path going forward. Now, I know you're really in the midst of establishing your leadership and getting this company moving the way I know it can go. I know you're a big believer in innovation. How have you instilled that kind of thinking in your company and what are you most proud of that you've seen happen on that front since you came on board? David, your expectations for my first year are quite high. I have to admit. Well, I know you're a mover and shaker, so I'm not going to throw you a bunch of little softballs here. That's the truth. On the innovation side, this is again where I think there's a real benefit to having 2,000 owners across the country who are all doing slightly different things in different places. I'm a big believer. I don't know who said the quote that the future is here. It's just not evenly distributed. I really love the adapt and adopt and find the opportunities within our franchisees that they're finding that are going to be fast forward and help us to innovate against some of those pieces. That's a process that we're still in as we think through that. I'm going to throw you a little softball here then. I've been asking you all these stuff. What have you enjoyed most about being CEO? Getting together with the team and having a chance to see it come to life in a way that is what they're creating. We've set up largely a whole new team here in the franchise support center. With the combination of carving out from the publicly traded company, moving the headquarters, really reestablishing a pivot to being more franchise focused, we've hired over 100 new people in the past six months. It's been a really exciting time to see those folks with their bright eyes and bushy tails and their excitement. They're buying into the dream of what the business can be and also having them help to create what the culture is that we want to take it going forward. That's been really exciting for me. You think about hiring those 100 people. What would be the two traits that you would hope each one of them would have? I would hope that they would have passion. We want our company to stand for more than just the work that we do. I want everybody to feel like they're doing more than just the job they've been assigned. I want them to have real passion for our mission of making every day heroes more heroic and for what we're doing to support our franchisees. That's a big piece of it. The second is I want them to be willing to adjust and change and grow in the role. I'm a big believer that if you hire an eight-sided peg for an eight-sided hole, then when the needs of the business change and you need a round peg, you're stuck. I need folks who are willing to shave off certain corners or to add on corners based on the opportunities that are available for the business and how they want to grow and develop as a person. You just mentioned your mission. Talk a little bit about that and why you think it's powerful. I think, again, it's making every day heroes more heroic as our mission. The way we think about that is when I think about the services that each of our brands provide, whether it's in service master restore, if a family's had a fire and need to get their home mitigated and repaired. If it's someone who's in the process of moving through two-minute a truck and is moving from an apartment to their first home as a new couple, for example, I mean, there's all such opportunities or if it's someone that's returning back to the workplace and wants to have a safe, clean workplace environment with our service master clean. Our frontline employees are providing those experiences for the consumer and the customer and that's really important. Those folks are so underappreciated so often and I think for us to really focus in on those frontline heroes and those folks that are delivering that value and that experience for that customer really helps me to get excited about what we do. It also relates to our owners. As I said, our owners are creating terrific opportunities for growth and development among their people and they're making their communities better. Their heroes enter eyes as well. That's a way for us who maybe a couple of steps removed from that customer overall to really think about what we're doing is to support those everyday heroes to be more heroic. How important do you think it is for a company to have a noble cause like that? I wouldn't want to work for one that didn't. I don't know about you, David. I think this is a time and a place where we've got to hang on to something that 's more than just the paycheck at the end of the day. It's got to be something that we feel like we've got impact. Particularly in this kind of labor environment where folks have so many opportunities to work across different companies, it's got to be a place where folks feel like they're valued but also that the impact that they're having goes beyond just the particular spreadsheet they may have done or the set of customer calls that they answered. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Elaine Stock in just a moment. What we're talking about here is teamwork and how to unleash the potential in your business. Another leader who does this exceptionally well is Steve Kerr, the head coach of the Golden State Warriors. You just have to remind people of each other's good qualities and to be reminded of each player's value to the group. So if you want to learn even more about how to unlock the power of your team, go back and listen to episode 62 here on How Leaders Lead. The other thing I wanted to ask you about being a CEO is that when you move into that seat, it's a different experience. What have you realized about being a CEO that you can only realize once you have the job? I've always had a view that the power of the team is more than the power of any individual and so I've always tried to surround myself with folks who bring different experiences and perspectives. As a CEO, I think it's even more important. If everybody in the room is agreeing with me, then I don't need to be in the room for sure. I think as a CEO, making sure you've got those folks who've got different experiences but also that you're creating the conditions where they're willing to challenge and to speak up for when they think you're wrong. I think that's a critical piece that as I've become CEO is become even more apparent to me. Now I want to take you back, Elaine, to your upbringing. Tell us about it and I'd love to hear a story from your childhood days that you think really impacted the way how you go about leading today. David, I grew up in rural Illinois. As I tell people, there was a corn field on one side, soybean field on the other. Lots of folks would know what that looks like and that was certainly my environment and I was the youngest of five kids. My family was a very blue collar family and one that had strong family values and strong community values but didn't put up with a lot of guff from the children for sure. That was a big part of my upbringing. Those things, there were so many lessons along the way on that. I can remember, for example, I brought home a pretty good report card one day and was sitting on my dad's lap to show it to him and he gave me a nice pat on the back . Then he said, "You know what? This is great but it really doesn't count for anything unless you use it for something good." That stuck with me, that it's not about what you can demonstrate in terms of accomplishments. It's more about what you can do that's actually going to have an impact and do something good. The other thing I would say is I went to a really small rural high school as you might expect. I get on the bus every morning for 30 minutes and get to my high school. My graduating class, I think, had 87 people of which 82 I grew up with and kindergarten. It's hard to hide in those kinds of environments. Those people know you better than you know yourself. When you have that kind of situation, you pretty quickly learn that you can't fake it. You've got to be who you are and you've got to be an authentic person because they'll call you out if you're not. That was a big piece of the upbringing too. It sounds like the Midwestern values were really front and center in your upbringing. I love that phrase. You just couldn't give people a lot of guff. Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, that was a phrase we would use too. I know exactly what you mean by guff. Who believed in you Elaine more than you might have even believed in yourself? That's a good question, David. I've been so fortunate to have so many people. I remember we did an exercise once at a leadership retreat where they had us write down on little post-its who took a chance on you. So you'd write on a post-its, somebody that had taken a chance on you. I really felt such a high level of gratitude because I must have filled out 20 or 30 of those post-its. I just feel like I've been really fortunate in terms of people that were willing to take a chance on me that were willing to put their own reputations on the line or a business result on the line or in giving me an opportunity to grow. It's something that I've tried to pay it forward with other folks as well. But there's so many folks. I remember when I was in college, I went to the University of Illinois and my guidance counselor of all people said, "Hey, I want you to go interview for this job because I was trying to pay my way through school." She said, "I know a job that you should go interview with." I'm like, "Okay. I had a pair of safety shoes from a previous summer job. I'm like, "Should I wear my safety shoes? I didn't have any idea what the job was." So I was trying to figure out what the right attire was for this job interview. She'd actually recommended me to be an assistant to the president of the University of Illinois, which had a blue my mind when I got the address and saw where that was. She put her own reputation on the line in order to make that recommendation. I was fortunate to get the position and had a terrific opportunity to work closely with the president and his family for a year and a half. Took me completely outside my comfort zone in terms of the types of things I was doing, the types of people I was meeting and really a delightful experience. Those kinds of opportunities, I've been fortunate to have them come my way at many points in my career. I know you started your career at McKinsey. What's the biggest value you got from starting out in that consulting role? It's a great company and a great environment. I didn't really know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still don't know what I want to be when I grew up. Consulting is a terrific place for that because you can see lots of different companies and work with lots of different people. I particularly enjoyed having the opportunity to work with lots of different companies and seeing their leaders at work and seeing some good things and some bad things along the way. I can remember I was fortunate to have an opportunity to work early in my career with Home Depot here in Atlanta back in the Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus days. Seeing them work together in their partnership but also seeing how they empowered store managers, how they really valued the people. That was something that stuck with me. Also, I remember distinctly Arthur telling me that if the values don't match, nothing else matters. That's always stuck with me too is how to think through that. I also saw companies that wouldn't have wanted to replicate. I kind of pretty quickly got a sense that if the presentation or the video looks really glitzy, you've probably got a problem underneath it somewhere. To me, that's the smoke for a potential fire. Trying to make sure that you're focusing in on the substance and what's really working as a piece that I saw at different levels and in different ways with different clients. When you think about your career and where you've been, as you just mentioned, the future is what you're really excited about and you don't know where it's going to take you. Was there a catalyst moment that really accelerated your career? Yeah, I would say. Actually, it was when I was with McKinsey in Dublin, Ireland. I was in the Dublin office for a while. I had only been there. My family had moved over. We'd only been there, I don't know, three or four months. The managing partner of the Dublin office, who had been a big part of my desire to move over there, was a guy that I'd worked with before and really wanted to work with again. He was fortunate to get an opportunity outside of McKinsey. He went to go be CFO of a Dublin-based company. We were looking around our managing partner of the firm at the time, Ian Davis, was looking around to see who's going to be the managing director for the Dublin office. He looked to the left to me and looked to the right of me and looked behind me and underneath me. Finally, I must offer to 10 people. I know I'm sure he didn't. Finally, he approached me and said, "Hey, I know you haven't been here very long, but would you be interested in leading the office?" Then I looked to the left of him and to the right of him and above him and below him to see if I could find somebody else to do it instead of me. I really loved client service. I really loved serving clients and felt like being the managing director for the office would eat into that some. Despite his misgivings and my misgivings, we decided to go forward with it and I became the managing director for the office. I have to say it was like a light bulb went off for me. The opportunity to really lead the team to have a finger on the pulse of the business, most importantly to move from in consulting, I found I was starting all of my sentences saying, "You should go do this." As leader of the office, I was starting my sentence as saying, "We will do this . We can do this. We are doing this." That was really exciting to me and really put the bug into me for getting a real job, as I call it, for leading P&Ls as opposed to being a consultant. Lane, now that you're at the top, how do you self-coaching to drive higher personal performance? It's one that I think a lot about every day. I think about it in the context of having opportunities to have people around me that are smarter than I am. I really do believe that finding folks who bring different aspects and who can challenge me and challenge my thinking is a part of what I want to do every day. It's a lot about that. I particularly like to make sure that that's a broad base of folks, not just in the office but also in the community. I love to do things with youth groups and with nonprofits and other areas so that I can have a chance to just have people who have different perspectives continue to frame my mind on different topics and help me to think about things in different kinds of ways. I'm a big absorber from other people and I like to make sure that I'm around folks with different backgrounds and different thoughts that challenge me along the day. You took this time off and you had what you called me time. How long did it take you with this me time before you were bored or did you get bored or what was that like to go from traveling around the world, going to all these different countries and then all the I know you have two kids and what was it like when you had that me time? Well, it was the second time I'd done that. I'd actually when I was with McKinsey, I took three years off when my kids were small. This is one of the things that I tell folks is you've got to do what's right for you and your family at any particular time and because if you're not, then it's not going to hold together and given the situation, it was the right thing for me and my family for me to take some time off early in my career and then later in my career. I tried not to make those decisions trying with the context of what's that going to mean for the future. You've got it. It's a little bit of the career mindfulness. You've got to do what's right for you at the time. It was a great experience both times for me. In both instances, they taught me that I'm a happier person and a better mother when I do have some work. It was good to take that time, but I also need to have the opportunity to work around other folks and have the daily sales or the accountability at the end of the month. Those are parts of what gives me excited to as well as the people that I'm working with. That was a part of it. I don't know that I got bored either time. I think it was more about the opportunities that came my way that at that moment were the right opportunities for me to take just like the service master one that we talked about earlier. You seem to have such a high sense of self-awareness and what you'd eat at a specific time. Is that something that you've always had or is that something that you've had to cultivate? What advice could you give to people in terms of how to get the self-awareness to figure out where they are at that point in time? This is one I think my family and the upbringing really helped on that piece of it. It's going to be true to yourself and be able to look yourself in the mirror. Those were common phrases in my household for sure. I think probably this was also some of the advice that I got when I joined McKinsey. McKinsey is one of those places like many companies where you could work 24 hours a day every day and still feel like there was more work to do for sure. Particularly in a client service business where the expectations are quite high . You can't do that. That's not a sustainable program. I got coaching pretty early on from my partners at McKinsey about the importance of setting priorities, the importance of really thinking about what's going to make a difference, and the importance of treating your personal and family needs at the same level that you would your other business needs. At one point in McKinsey I can remember I would schedule in like a client meeting. My assistant had special coding for my client meetings and I talked with her about for my daughter's play at school is to schedule it in as a client meeting. I would take those things that were important to me personally and say they're just as important as clients are and we need to make sure that we've got that balance going forward. This has been a lot of fun catching up with you Elaine and I always have fun with a little quick gliding round of Q&A. What would be three words that best describe you? I would say curious, impatient. You don't want to see me in a line at a grocery store for sure and probably real. What you see is what you get with me. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be and why? I would love to be a person that thinks about things completely differently. You hear about those folks who can hear colors or see sounds that their brains just work differently. I'd love to do that for a day and just live in their brains for a day. What's your biggest pet peeve? My biggest pet peeve is when people treat front line workers as if they're not there or they don't matter. That's my biggest pet peeve. That's a good one to have. Tell us something about you that few people would know. I'm obsessed or at least my kids would say I'm obsessed with Sacagawea, the Lewis and Clark Shoshone guy. I just think it's amazing that here she was the 16 year old girl who was not there by choice by the way and who saved their butts literally their lives more than once during that trip across Louisiana purchase and did it. She was pregnant. She went behind a bush and had her baby and then carried her baby for the rest of it. My daughter talks about the futurist female. The past was a lot of female too. She's pretty awesome. I would say so. Do you have any hidden talents, Elaine? Not a one. I do many things poorly, David, but I have no hidden talents. What's the favorite thing you do when you do have some downtime? Oh, I love to go hiking. I particularly like to go hiking with my family. The other thing is I love to play Uno. My family will tell you that I'm a drive them crazy. I've always got a pack of Uno cards with me and willing to play with whoever. You mentioned there's been a lot of females in the past and your daughter says it's a female future. What specific advice would you give to female leaders? I think female leaders actually in many ways have advantages over male leaders. I've got a lot of disadvantages too. Don't get me wrong on that. One of the things I always like to tell female leaders is I think one of the things that come more naturally to us is what I call being bilingual. The point is there is that stereotypically and there's some patterns to this, men and women have different ways of talking. The story that I think Deborah Tan entails in her book is a man and a woman are driving down the road and the woman says, "Are you hungry?" The man checks his Bali system and says, "No." A woman would say, "Well, what she was really asking was, "I'm hungry. Would you like to stop?" They just talk differently. In the business world today, the opportunity to talk female, if I can use that stereotype in terms of bringing a group together, soliciting opinions, coming to consensus , being able to help people to see a path forward that without telling them or demanding that they go on that path forward, I think is a really important skill in communication behavior. It's also important to be able to say, "Here are the three things we need to do and we're going to go do it right now," and which tends to be more of a stereotypical male way of talking. I think being able to speak in both of those ways and communicate in both of those ways is really effective because there are times when you need both. I think that that's a piece that I think that because women leaders so often have had to work in both environments, we tend to more naturally be able to pull different tools out of our toolkit to match those situations. Yeah, everything I've seen, all the research that I've seen says women have the two traits that you need to be successful going forward in the future. They're more empathetic, more collaborative. Whereas men, it's more of my way is the highway a lot of time, which is no longer the right way. That's probably a gross exaggeration in terms of polarizing the situation. It's great to see so many female leaders like yourself rise to CEOs and we got a lot further to go. I think it's great to see that. What advice would you give to all aspiring leaders? One is, I think it is, they'll be true to yourself. I think having more of an, think about what impact you want to have and then sort your career to match up to that rather than defining a career or path that you want. I think everybody's going to be happier if they see the impact that they're going to have and start with what you want to accomplish in the world and then work back from that in terms of the pieces. The second is, I said, it is like Arthur Blank says, it's all about the values. If you're in a situation where you don't feel comfortable with how folks are acting or behaving or thinking, then it's not going to work. You as a leader need to lead the values and you need to be explicit about them and articulate about them and talk about them frequently and walk the talk on them. I would say that would be my second one. The third one is, have fun with the people around you. Nobody wants to come to work just for the work that they do. It's about being able to enjoy the experiences that you're having with your colleagues, with your customers and being able to find the joy in each of those pieces. It's interesting because recently my daughter and I had an interview with Indra Nui and she just wrote a book called My Life in Full and it talks about work, family and the future. When Ashley, who did the interview, asked Indra if balance was possible, she didn't seem to think so. How do you feel about work, family balance? Is balance the right word for people to think about? It's a word that I struggle with too, David. I don't know that I would call it balance. It's a little bit like the question you asked me, how do I spend time across my brands? How do I spend time across the priorities in my life is something that I put a lot of focus on. Those priorities in my life can be my family, they can be my work, they can be my friends, they can be myself. How we find time or schedule our time to manage that is the balance. If somebody doesn't have a family, then they need to figure out what their priorities are and have a balance across those pieces too. I don't think about it as being, how do I balance work and family? I think about what's important to me and how do I commit the time to those things to do what I feel is necessary on those. I also think it's a little bit of a false aspiration to try and believe you can always make those things work all the time. They're going to be ebbs and flows. What I try to ask myself is, are those ebbs and flows ones that I feel comfortable with? Am I taking the opportunity if one particular part of my life has been short changed for the past month or so? Am I taking the opportunity to really invest in it in the next month? I think it's a big piece of trying to make sure that those priorities continue to be important to me. It is as well as I do. It's hard to find time for all the things that we want to do. That's why it's even more important to make sure that you know which ones come to the top of the list. Right now, you're digging into this new role and you're making things happen. You're changing a lot of things. I'll wrap this up with one last question. If you look out five years from now, what do you hope to see at Service Master? What do you hope happens so you could write the story? If I could write the story, it would be that our owners are more successful than they've ever imagined in terms of our franchise owners. It's that our company stands for more than just the work that we do and that we 've created tremendous opportunities for our people to grow and have an impact in the world . I love it. I really appreciate you taking the time, Elaine, to have this conversation. It was a lot of fun. It is fun to see somebody digging into something new and having fun doing it. I know you've got a great team there focused and ready to get behind you and your franchise ease. Good luck to you. Thanks. Thanks very much, David. This has been terrific. Well, what a great conversation with Elaine Stock. And now it's time for my favorite part of our podcast episodes. That is where I give you coaching to help you develop as a leader. This week, as part of your weekly personal development plan, here's what I want you to do. It's very likely that by the end of the day, there's going to be something that comes across your desk that you'll be tempted to do on your own. You're going to want to control the outcome. And the best way to get that result you want is to take it on yourself. That's what you think every single time. But not today. When that task or project comes through, think about someone on your team that you can pass it off to. Give up some control and see what happens. Now I'll tell you, this will be difficult for a while if you're used to controlling everything. But trust me on this. If you want your business to grow, you have to start leaning on your team. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that the great leaders have learned to give up control . Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. See you next week. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]