Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Larry Sin, who's actually the father of corporate culture and the chairman of Sin Delaney. Larry and his business partner were hired by Sam Walton in the early days of Walmart, and it was there that Larry began to understand the intangible part of an organization that really makes a difference. Today we call this company culture, which is simply defined as the way people behave and the way they work together. Believe it or not, Larry published the world's first research on corporate culture and has spent his entire career helping organizations be at their best. When you think about it, helping others be at their best. That is what being a great leader and a great coach is all about. And I'll tell you, Larry has made quite an impact in my life as my coach over the years. So today's episode is very special for me and I can't wait for you to hear it. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Larry Sin, the chairman of Sin Delaney. You know, Larry, you were the pioneer and now you're the leading authority in culture building. Tell us your story. How did you grow up? I think I was born to be an entrepreneur. My mother really believed in the American way and independence and capitalism and all. So I started selling flowers on street corners when I was 11 years old on commission. And I realized you could make more money if you're one of the drivers that drove other kids to corner. I was 14 years old, I got a driver's license so I could not only sell myself but make money off other kids and that kind of got in my blood. My dad was an engineer though and I didn't know any better. So I started UCLA engineering school. But at the same time, I started my first business at 17, which was kids selling flowers on street corners. And I ended up with as many as 100 kids out there on holidays and weekends. And then I saw they didn't sell flowers in supermarkets that time. You had to go to a florist. I went to Europe and saw everybody brought flowers home. So I said, well, why don't I do that? So I started a second business which was selling flowers and produce departments of supermarkets. So by the time I was 18, I was driving a Jaguar K120 and doing pretty well and I thought, hey, I kind of like this. You're kidding me. You were doing this in college. In all in college while I was at the same time on the gymnastics team and taking a full load in engineering school and working weekends and holidays in the business. So you got to work hard to be a leader and entrepreneur. If you have any experiences when you're doing that that really drove home the importance of team building? Yes, it was all about energy management. If you can get the right energy from people and you can direct that. And what that takes is people feeling appreciated, people feeling valued, people feeling recognized. So I spent most of my time, even with the kids on street corners, pumping them up, letting them know they're doing a great job, get out their hustle and thanking them. And I learned very early on that if they feel good about themselves and what they were doing, I'd say, you know, you're making people happy taking these flowers home. If they could feel that, they'd do better and that stayed with me my whole life . You know, it's really amazing to me and I listen to you. You don't sound very much like an engineer. I'm not. Yet you went into engineering to study that. It's not a field necessarily known for exhibiting people skills. Why do you think that is? Yeah, I think that people really value numbers and they value models and they find pleasure in the more objective things. And I actually found myself, I went to the testing bureau at UCLA in my junior year and I said, hey, I don't feel right. And they did all these tests and they said, we don't know what you're doing in engineering school. You should be a salesman or a minister. So I did go on to get my MBA, but I used my engineering skills, teamed up with a kid named Jim Delaney, another engineering student and a professor and started the original sendal, which was a retail consulting firm. And what I quickly discovered even there, we were trying to improve processes like supply chain. And I found that it was easier to decide on chains and to get people to change. And most organizations were like dysfunctional families. They had turf issues and trust issues and people didn't feel appreciated and values and recognized. And I got my epiphany. We were hired by a guy named Sam at a place called Walmart to design the original supply chain when he had this vision of bringing low cost goods to rural America. And he was an evangelist in terms of this purpose he had. And it was so easy to work there. The spirit was so high, kind of like you created David and the organization I work with you on, just that positive, we can do it, can do attitude was there. At the same time we were hired by Woolworth in New York to do the same thing. And I'd fly from Bentonville to New York and be like going to the morgue, just a bunch of old guys sitting around a table. And their only purpose was to maintain the status quo. And I said to myself, you know, that little coming Bentonville is going to take over the world and this coming is going to die. There's something you didn't teach me in school. And that began my journey to really understand this intangible part of organizations that really makes a difference. What we now call today culture. It's interesting you went to college, then you went, you're an engineer in the aerospace industry. When you went into that job, how did you like it and what did you really discover? Okay, I quickly discovered that I hated it. That was the urge of Sputnik that'll date me. There were very few engineers with MBAs that could help manage projects. And so they gave me more money than I thought I'd ever make in my life. And I got there, but I hated it. And I knew I had to get out of there because I saw my bosses and they were kind of locked into their lifestyle. And I said, now's the time to escape. So I left and went back and joined the professor at UCLA and started the consulting work. That's why I began that journey. Yeah. And you really focused on leadership development then. You seem to have found your passion by doing something that you didn't like necessarily. It took you to an area that you do like, what coaching can you give to people on how to find their passion? All too often we get into ruts in terms of our career. For me, because my father was an engineer and he talked about engineering, I thought I should do that. You have to find what really inspires you, what moves you, what gets you out of bed in the morning. And I found it wasn't engineering. It really was having people be at their best. How do you help people live life? How do you help leaders be their very best selves? And that's what really became my inspiration. As you mentioned, you started Cindalani and it was originally around the idea of process improvement, which comes from your engineering background. And then you learn from Walmart this whole thing about the heart of leadership. Did you get to spend any time with Sam Walton? Yes, I did. To see him in his famous Saturday morning meetings where he would be up there talking about their purpose and what they could do and how he wanted his efficient organization, but happy box because that way we could serve people. That was an inspiration to me. And I really, for the first time I saw an inspirational leader, that struck me then. And then this whole idea of getting the right work environment to get people to be their very best selves. You define that as culture. Is that your definition of culture? I never really liked that word too much, Larry. It sounds too much like a germ to me, but what would be your truest definition of culture? It's very simple to me. It's the way people behave and the way they work together. Do they appreciate one another? Do they work together collaboratively? Do they blame others or are they accountable? So it really is how do people behave and work together? It's also a part of what's the spirit there? Because one of the essential behaviors is to have a positive spirit in organization. That people feel appreciated and valued. I'm sure you remember this, but I remember getting a letter from you and talking about Cyndelani. At that point, Tom, I was president of KFC and I was on this journey to really build a great culture. I was doing more of a one man band using my own personal capabilities to get that done. But I realized I couldn't do it by myself and I needed a process. From the grace of God, this letter shows up from Larry. I said, "Well, I'm going to talk to this guy named Larry Sin. You come to talk to me at KFC. You had a real process that we could follow to help fire up the organization and build a culture." The first thing you recommended was this offsite that we did in Blackberry, Tennessee. We felt it was important for us to go off as a team and get to know each other. Why did you feel that shared experience was a great way to start the initiative ? Yes, to begin with, I remember sitting across the table from you. You said something to affect to me. If I can really create a recognition culture here and get people in the right place, I can really change this place. I was taken by your vision of doing that. Back to the story, after I discovered my passion at Walmart, I went back to school. I went and found a professor at USC who had written a paper on this thing called Organizational Character of Personality. I said to him, "I have to understand this to help organizations." He said, "Well, we all know, Sarah, no one's ever studied it. What if we paid your way through the doctoral program?" That began the world's first research published on corporate culture. To your point, the central finding of that dissertation was that organizations tend to become shadows of their leaders, their senior teams. That's where the term "shadow leader" came from out of that research. I knew we had to get a CEO and senior team to model the behaviors they want, to live the culture they wanted in order to get it down the organization. We started with you and your team off there in Blackberry Farms. One of the things, Larry, that I found to be so powerful about what you did is you developed a number of different exercises that you would have each of the team members go through together and then you'd share the outcome. Can you talk about a couple of those kinds of exercises and why you think that 's important? When I first wrote my dissertation on culture, the question was, "How do you change habits of adults? How do you get successful people who may be too territorial or too controlling or want to power?" The normal models of defining it and reinforcing it don't work very well. You can tell somebody to listen. They still won't listen. I ran into a social scientist, a guy named Kurt Lewin, who said, "People need epiphanies. They need aha moments in order to change behaviors. It's like the guy who had a bad diet and did an exercise and has a heart attack . All of a sudden, they're walking around the block and eating greens." The guy who didn't listen to his wife divorces and says, "You jerk. You never listen to me. They may do better the second time around." I said, "Hey, I'm an engineer. Why do I engineer a series of exercises which create epiphanies around things like accountability, collaboration, positive spirit, coaching and feedback, and that's where it came from." That's the heart of what we call inside-based or experiential learning, which is really the engine that drives our culture shaping work. There are a number of fascinating exercises. We play one of these interesting things where people sit around tables and try to assemble pieces into a square. You put them under a lot of time pressure and they go on knee jerk. People who try to take over and control over control. People who hoard too much keep way too many pieces and nobody else can finish. The game is a mirror of people's life. They make them sit back and reflect on that and write a page on how did the way you played that game. How is that a mirror of how you play your life at working at home? People get some aha's out of that. There's a whole series of those that are part of the process. I remember one that had a big impact on me was the CDFs. Yes. Most people are too righteous. One of the keys to not getting old, to being successful, to being agile, to being innovative is really to realize that we miss things, that we need a team to see things. It's your team together, team apart notion, David, that you put out in the world there, which is a wonderful notion. That's just how people are wired. In this case, when we put up a paragraph and say, "Count the number of letters in there." Everybody misses it. There's a scientific reason they miss it because they click into that engineering left brain and you can't see it unless you're in have some of your more human right brain clicked in. I've had CFOs bet me $10,000 that they were right and they were wrong. They don't need a bit of humility to learn and that helps them get it. I remember what it was. The real is that you miss the F's, which is the Oves because you phonetically pronounce Oves versus Oves and you zip right through that. Well, I was one of those guys. I was ready to bet the ranch. The epiphany I had was that the passion and the conviction that I had while it 's a great strength could also be something that can overwhelm others and that I might be wrong. Then I needed to look at the detail a lot more than maybe I did at times. That was very, very powerful. You know, Larry, you taught me the importance of getting your mindset right to make good decisions and the concept that I love and you wrote a fabulous book on it and I recommend all the listeners here that you read this book on the mood elevator that you wrote. Can you give us a little bit of a cliff notes version of what you mean by mood elevator, climbing up the mood elevator? So we all know we have times when we're at our best kind of top of our game where the ideas are flowing, where we hear people better. In times like that, we have certain kinds of feelings like I'm more hopeful and optimistic when I'm at my best. I tend to listen better. I'm more compassionate. I'm more innovative. I'm more grateful for life. I'm more creative. There are other times when we really off our game. And for me, I know I'm heading south when I start to get really easily irritated and bothered. I become too impatient. And then I might drop down to self-righteous. Then I'm even get down to anger. And if I go all the way to the bottom, I get down to depression. And so we all ride this thing I call the mood elevator in life all the way from gratitude to top to depression at the bottom. And the key is that you can do something about that. That you are at your best when you're at curious and above. And in fact, that level of curious is a fascinating one because most people live in judgment, not curiosity. So let's say somebody in the team does something you don't understand. You can immediately go to what's wrong with them. You can go to irritated bother or you can say to yourself, "Huh, I wonder how they see that differently than I do. Maybe I should ask a question to find out. Which going to do you better?" Well, living in curiosity is a lot better. So the mood elevator, it's almost as if we have a human dashboard. I never live home without my pocket card that shows me the levels to, because if I can pay attention to where I am, I can do something about it. You find that the best leaders just really hone in on self-awareness and understand themselves? Yes. If they don't, then we have all the things we're seeing because that's lack of emotional intelligence. So being aware of where you are, in fact, you shared one of the principles there. Don't make decisions if you're not in a good state of mind. If you're absolutely sure you need to tell somebody something, you probably shouldn't tell them right then because you're thinking it's unreliable. So you're thinking it's more and more reliable as the day wears on, David. A lot of these things you talk about are soft skills, but you also have very performance oriented because these soft skills lead to the harder results. And one of the things that you talked about was the accountability ladder. And that was a very powerful exercise in our company. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure, I think the world can be divided into winners and winers into those who complain about things and those who make things happen. So it's having what I call an accountability mindset which really embodied in the notion of what more can I do no matter what the obstacles are. And so just like the vertical dimensions of the Mood elevator, we have vertical dimensions in the accountability ladder. The bottom is kind of blaming or excuses or wait in hope. And you find to get up to acknowledge reality and then to finding solutions then to make it happen. So if you can get a person or an organization with all their energy into acknowledging reality and up and have almost none down at blaming one another, making excuses, proving they're wrong, then it just unleashes an enormous amount of energy. I'd say that probably a third of the energy is wasted most organizations by people either blaming others or complaining about things they can't change anyway. These concepts, the Mood elevator, the accountability ladder, broken squares, looking for the F's, these are powerful concepts. How did you come up with these? Most of them came out of my life experience. I mean the other one we didn't talk about, probably a million people around the world have hooked on to is be here now. This notion of living life in the present, of being in a meeting when you're in a meeting, not in your device, of going home to a loved one and listening to their life, not still thinking about your life. And so this notion of a quieter mind is there. And so I learned that one, for example, from raising kids. I had three kids, like five, seven and nine. And I was too busy running the business, traveling too much. And I was flying a kite one day out in front of the house. And anybody going by would have said, "Isn't that great as a father and son?" But where I was was totally into my head worrying about the next day. And my son just grabbed me and said, "Dad, Dad, would you really play with me today? Would you really play with me?" And it was like a bolt of lightning through my heart because he'd caught me and I wasn't there. I said, "This is a powerful notion. I need to teach this to the world." So that's where that one came from. But all of them came from someplace. The blue chip exercise about priorities, that came in working with a sales group that was working hard but on the wrong things. So they all really came somehow out of my life experience. I could visualize these things and then convert them to a five-step learning methodology to make them happen. What would be those five steps quickly? Well, the first isn't, you can't just explain something to somebody. They've got to have an experience of it. You have to have an aha moment. And that's what they're designed to do. So don't talk about win-lose. Put them in something where they try to kill somebody and win and make the other person lose. Once you've done that, stop them. Catch them in their tracks and have them reflect upon that. In fact, in life, if we would reflect upon things more often when things happen to us, we'd be wiser. Once you've done that, share about it. Talk to somebody else about it. And so there we have people sharing one another, what I just learned. I just realized that when I'm too excited, I don't make good decisions. If I get too excited. Finally, and you convert it to action, but the first step really is how does this apply to our business? How can we use this to get better customer satisfaction, better results, and then finally create a commitment to what you're going to do? So that's the learning model. You know, Larry, you said, how does this apply to your business? And when it comes to that culture and creating the right work environment, you always talk about not just necessarily having a set of values, but making sure that the values you have are relevant to the business itself. What you're feeling on that, you did one of the better jobs of any of our clients in history when you created the initially how we work together principles and how we win together principles. You're good at naming things too. You know, when I say culture is how people behave and work together, you had those how we work together principles. And they pretty well laid out. People will be accountable. People will appreciate and recognize others. So you define the culture you needed. And if you can't define it, it's hard to create it. So all of our work with clients to help them clarify, sometimes modify their behavior set, whether you call them working principles or values to define the culture. Yeah, I think what we did, which you helped us get to was what are the behaviors that are in your best restaurants? So being in the restaurant business, we looked at the restaurant managers who were the most successful and we said, okay, they had these things happen in their restaurant. People were accountable. There was positive energy. There was recognition. So we took those kind of characteristics and called them or how we work together principles. And that was much more direct than talking about values and worked very well. So what we do is we, well, people may have a category like FedEx, for example, their collaborative value is I'm a vital link in a chain of success because we got to deliver the package. So everybody has to see themselves as a vital link in the chain of success of getting that package to the next day. So that's how they defined it. They're basic thesis as you start out by getting your senior team aligned and then you as leaders have to cascade that throughout the organization. How critical is it for you to take how we work together principles or whatever you want to call them and get the rest of the organization going through these exercises and self discovery and the culture drivers? Yes, we actually sat down a few years ago after doing this 30-some years and said, what are the underlying principles? And that's one of the principles. Principle number one is purposeful leadership is God be led by the senior team. They've got to have a purpose and they've got to define how they work together principles. But the second principle is personal change. They've got to have some epiphanies. But the third one is momentum and mass. It's like overcoming an organ transplant. Cultures resist change. And so unless you get this ball rolling, unless you're going to get a head of steam as you did, taking it from layer to layer to layer to layer and getting leaders involved in that, then it's hard to overcome the old cultures. That's the third principle. The fourth one is focus sustainability. How do you keep it going for 10, 15 years, 20 years to make that happen? So it's one of the principles. If you had to pick one element, I mean, you've got four basic principles, but he had to pick one thing that was the key to really creating a powerful performance culture, what would that element be? It'd be in two parts. One, I think you need to have that personal change. Cultures don't change. People do. So I think you need to have that shift in people and that shift really needs to be essentially them living life in the higher states of the mood elevator where they are more appreciative, where they create a positive environment, where they recognize people, where they listen, where they're creative. And so it's really those epiphanies people need to have to change. Otherwise it's just another program. It's just another program of the day. Can you actually build a great culture without the leader or not playing an active role in driving it? I don't think so, not sustainably. I mean, if you had a hell of a senior team in spite of the leader, you could make some progress, but in time, unless it's a CEO-led process, as General Joe Robles at USAA, a client that has the highest customer loyalty in America said, "I'm the chief culture officer." And that's where it needs to be. You were the chief culture officer. Larry, you studied leadership. You know more about anybody. I know. Do you think leaders are born or can they be made? They can be made. I mean, interesting example about the power of this process, I got a letter from the wife of the CFO, a major Midwest bank, and she said, "Larry, I'm not sure who you sent home, but you can keep the other guy." And there's an example of someone who really had pretty well been written off, even in the company as being kind of a curmudgeon who came to life and saw a different light. People can do that. You know, here's my belief, and it actually goes back to my mother, and that is , I think we all come into the world as those grandkids of yours. They're curious, aren't they? They're loving, aren't they? They're trusting, aren't they? That's how they are. And we all have that within us. And over time, we begin to develop these defense mechanisms. We defend ourselves. We make excuses. We blame other... We do all these things. And so, it's in every one of us. It's a great song to that effect. It's in every one of us that's there. And part of I see our role and my role in the world is to help people really get back to the best of who they are. The real core way that you do that is through this self-awareness and helping people getting their personal epiphanies, exactly, and helping them to live life on a higher plane. It's interesting, if you look at the mood elevator and the lower floors of the mood elevator, it's all about me. In the upper floors, it's more about what I'm doing for others. And unless we're in service to others, whether it's in a quick service restaurant or a hospital, wherever they are, or to our own employees, unless we're in service to something bigger than us, we will not be the best we can be. What do you think really separates a truly great leader from just an okay leader or solid leader? Probably the table stakes are they need to have the capabilities to be strategic and to make decisions. But beyond that, they need to really align people. They need to really bring people along. I think that's another one of your great books, taking people with you. If they can learn to take people with them, it doesn't matter how smart you are , how good your strategy is. If you can't bring people along, no matter what size department, function, organization, no matter what level you are, you've got to bring your people along. And that means you've got to listen to them, you've got to recognize them, you 've got to coach them, you've got to develop them, those things are paramount. I know this is really a challenging question to ask somebody who thinks so deeply about this topic. But what do you think would be the single biggest thing and single best thing that a leader could do to bring energy to an organization? Appreciate their people. If they just spent more time catching people doing things right and appreciate them, if they could do one thing, that'd be the most powerful thing they could do. Well recognition definitely shows that you care. There's no question about that. Your analogy between Walmart and Woolworth was really good. What was the worst thing you saw at a culture like Woolworth? Oh, God. I'm a literally sabotage. I mean, people would actually work to make things not work. There was resentment. And people were very self-centered and very territorial and very victimized and low energy. It's just all those things came together. And that's not a good culture. And those are the traits of probably the worst leaders that you could think of, right? Yes, that's right. They're self-centered. They're not empowering. They hold too much power themselves. They take credit. They don't give credit. They don't make people feel good. Yeah. You've helped so many companies and so many leaders like myself achieve their potential or at least get part of a dime. You have your own company, which is pretty significant in and of its own right now. It's not you're not a one man band. How have you practiced what you preach in your own company? You know, it's interesting. If you come to send any every single person from our receptionist to our mail room, we'll tell you their personal purpose. So we have a purpose which is to make a positive impact on the world by inspiring leaders to create thriving cultures. And every person sent only goes through a training to help them find their purpose as it aligns with our purpose. We're a very purpose driven organization. We spend a lot of time on development and coaching. Coaching and feedback is really a critical thing. Not just I appreciate you, but you could be even more effective. Our average tenure of our consultants is probably close to 20 years. They just don't leave. And because they like the environment, because they're learning, growing. And also I think they get intrinsic satisfaction from doing the work. So if you can have people get satisfaction from the work they do, that's a powerful thing. What was the highest point in your career? I probably is what's going to happen tomorrow. But what was the highest point in your career? And when you had that, if you look back, what did you do to keep the pressure on elevating performance? Okay. You know, I've had several high points. One is when I had the epiphany, actually, was in a personal training I was going through to devote my life to creating a culture shaping firm. The energy that came out of that in the years where I created all those modules and again to make it happen. A second one was we did our first CEO level session for the Broadway department stores. We've been working within the store. And I finally said to the CEO, he said, "Can you fix our stores?" And I said, "Only if I can start with you and the senior team." And we did our first CEO level intervention. And oh my God, the Broadway increased market share by 30% in California. And I said, "Eureka, we have something here." And that's when we actually spun it out as a separate company from the retail consulting group. And it's a major high point in my life in terms of making that happen. So when you go out, you spin this thing off, you're higher than a kite. How did you get enough juice to get to the next level? Well part of my philosophy is that our mental well-being and our physical well- being are interconnected. And so part of how I maintain my energy and life, and incidentally, David, I'm a nationally ranked, undefeated in the 80 and over category in triathlons in America. So I'm really work hard at this. You're amazing. You're my hero. I swear to God, there's no question. My life is, I have this belief since I was young that if I'm going to serve others, my family first, and then others, I need to be at my best myself. I need to take care of myself. So I've always been really conscious of energy, of diet, of sleep, of exercise, of learning how to have a quiet mind and not worry, of meditating, all these things that I think if I really, I have a belief I would take care of myself, I'll be at my best and that'll also give my energy. Gratitude is the other one. The exercise you do has scientific validity behind it. It's called the Three Blessings and it's written up by Dr. Seligman who wrote the book Flourish. Oh, I was going to trademark that myself. That's okay. But it could be a small thing like it was a great pillow in the hotel last night. Or my wife made me a salmon sandwich today before I came to work. I'm blessed by that, but it's just living life in gratitude, gives you energy, and then seeing you're helping others and making a difference gives you energy. Having a purpose gives you energy. And it's not all Pollyanna. People say to me sometimes, "God, this mood all right sounds kind of idealistic ." What happens when the times are really bad? Well, back in, you talk about the good times and the bad times back at the end of the dot gomboom around 2000, we actually decided in order to grow then we were going to become part of a roll-up of consulting firms called Proven. And so we sold the company for all stock to Proven. But within 90 days, we hadn't done a good enough due diligence. Proven started to collapse. We were the only money making one there. And the stock went from $26 to $1. So there it was my life's work, my company worth many, many millions of dollars gone. I didn't own it anymore. So that was bad enough. But at the same time, I was getting on a plane going to Hawaii and the doctor called and said, "Come back," he says, "You got a brain tumor." So that was the second thing. The next week, my wife announced she was pregnant. We've been wanting to have a child. She was 52. I was 65. Had a brain tumor. I'd lost my company. And that was not good. But you know what's interesting is that I was still a blessed man. It was operable tumor. I can always make money of a family that loves me. So I got back to gratitude for life. And that got me my wisdom back. We bought the company back for not a whole lot. We made it stronger than ever out of that. Have a child who's now a six foot one volleyball player named Logan, who's a beautiful son and all worked out. I think I could have had a nervous breakdown then, David, but I didn't. But how long did it take you, Larry, to get your mood up? I mean, when you get something like that, it's like, boom, you know, how long did it take you to get to your recovery stage? Probably four months. You know, I probably went through a month of just beating the heck out of myself for selling the company and doing that wrong. And then I went through why me, you know, there's no known reason for acoustic neuroma, but I had one. And why me, I take care of myself. I'm healthy. When I could finally let go of all that blaming and wanting things to be different and just come back to the present and get quiet, then I saw more than my three blessings . And once I saw them, I became effective again and could solve all the problems. That's great. Do you see any differences, Larry, and the qualities it takes to lead today versus 20 years ago? I do. I think there's maybe too much made of millennials, but I think that the reality is is that the higher archical, do what I say, era is gone. People need to feel more a part of things. They need to have more latitude. They need to have more flexibility. They need to feel more involved. But the core is still there. I mean, I believe the principles we teach are universal, that there'll always be a need for recognition, people feeling valued, if not more today than before. For me, it was just if you're working hard and sweating, you must be doing a good job. You know, my dad taught me. So I think it's even more need for development of people skills, of team skills , of behavioral skills, of appreciation skills. I think they're going to be more and more and more needed. And I also think, can we need for more agility and flexibility? You need to really be open to new things and trying new things. In this podcast, you are like on fire. I mean, it's fun to listen to you. But I have to tell you, I've always considered you to be a very quiet, un assuming, humble guy. And I look at you now, you know, and you're talking about what you do. How did you get the courage and just the conviction to really become the company's number one salesman? You know, I think it's true. I think I'm probably by nature an introvert. I mean, I like my quiet time. I like to sit and watch the waves break. And I do enjoy that, but I'm a learned extrovert because I, this lights my fire . When I start talking about the work we do, I light up. Otherwise, I can be pretty quiet, calm guy. And whenever I'm going to make a decision, I really take a few deep breaths and get quiet because I believe that's where you get your most wisdom. When I get really quiet, that's when I'm in touch with, I say universal wisdom, ideas even beyond me. So I really value quietness. But when I'm talking about this, I just am an evangelist like Sam was back in the early days of Walmart. What advice can you give leaders to get out of their comfort zone? Take a look at the habits and what you're in. Look at something different you can do even within the job you have. Find something different you can get excited about. Try to find something that lights your fire because that will begin to move you . We've done some interesting research with University of Michigan on a thing called thriving and characteristics and thriving people. And one of those characteristics is purpose. One is this positive spirit, but the third one is a growth mindset. So I think the idea of being really curious. I mean, I have a fascination with longevity, as you might imagine. And so I get probably six different newsletters from Stanford and Harvard Medical School. I'm always learning about things that have to do with health, but I'm also curious about the mind and the brain. And so I learn about that and how people learn and now learning modalities going on. And so I think this idea of really begin to be a student, never stop being a student, never stop being curious. And you know, most people, they hate conflict. I mean, absolutely hate conflict. Yet every leader has got to deal with it. So what's the best way for a leader to handle a conflict situation? Well, what's interesting is that I believe that they need to be handled, but I don't even necessarily see them as conflict. What they usually are is people have different points of view about things. And we don't see things the same way. And those exercises like missing the F's or the collage where we put up this sheet of pictures of 20 different things and ask people what they see. Everybody sees different things. If people can understand that everybody is just doing what makes sense to them and they see things differently, then the way you go about approaching differences is resolve conflict without conflict. If you can get people to be trusting and this whole notion of assuming positive intention in teammates, not assuming motives and then dealing with things. So conflict resolution isn't bam, bam, bam, conflict resolution is people being more trusting, seeing positive intentions, knowing other people see things they don 't see and really having dialogue about that. If you can do that in a healthy way, you will resolve whatever it is. What coaching can you give to young aspiring leaders on what the best way is to provide coaching as they become a supervisor and start having people work for them? Here's what I've always found with you or anybody else. If somebody believes that I'm coaching, believes that I really see value in them and believe in them and I have some ideas that can help them be more effective, they want to hear it. If they think I don't like them, I'm critical of them and I try to give them feedback, they won't hear it. So the key is first of all, catch them doing some things right and make sure they realize you value them and appreciate them. Once you've done that, then we think the phrase, "Are you open to some feedback ? I'd like to share some ideas with you." I think it could make you even more effective and get some permission even that way. Then give them the feedback and so I'd say become a feedback machine. I appreciate this, you're more effective here. I appreciate this, you can even do even better at that. If they can get that diet of both of those in some balance, then you're going to really develop them and they'll take it. I listen to you talk about it, if you do this, you can be even more this or that. I didn't hear any butts. I didn't hear any butts in those statements. No butts is and, right. It's an and. That's true. Who doesn't have great qualities and who couldn't be even more effective? All of us. That's just us. That's just people. That butts a real momentum killer in any phrase, isn't it? It is. Yeah. They stop hearing. They wait for the bomb to drop. You are constantly staying fresh and honing your skills. What's got you most excited the day that you're learning about? Well, we never had a way in the past to truly in a highly effective way to get to every single employee in an organization. Actually, the head of innovation is send to lane. He's got the send jeans is my son Darren. He primarily with a little bit of information. He's working on this process that will get our concepts in a really interesting learning way to every single employee in very large organizations right down the front line. I'm really excited because we're going to touch more people that way and affect companies even more. That's my current passion. Yeah. That's been something that all leaders I think are working as. How do you really get to the front line so that the customer really feels it? Is technology going to play a huge role in that? Interesting. It is not. Now, we're working with some technology that will support that. The fact is the people you want to get to don't all have technology. We're going to an organization like Caesars Entertainment with eight hotels and all the housekeeping and all the valets. They don't have company computers. We're actually going a fascinating infographics way with simple messages and then little huddles or dialogues among people because you can get people to look at something and then talk to their colleagues about it. It's amazing what comes out of that. Yeah, I'm on the Comcast board and I went to one of the call centers and we're doing huddles. Those huddles are so powerful because people are sharing their experiences, which is really fantastic. If you're a couple of that with flipped classroom by getting content to people in advance and say sometime this month, we're going to talk about the mood elevator. Here's a couple of questions. How could this help our guest experience? How could they help this team? Now, when you come together and you're hoddling, talk about that. It simulates the insight learning methodology because people get to think about it, reflect on it and then talk about it. You're building this business. You're taking it to the next level. You've got your family that you're passionate about. You're a triathlete. How do you balance all this stuff? I mentioned the be here now theory, but how do you bring all this together in your life without and have an extra ounce left before you fall asleep at night? Well, just like you did, you surround yourself with wonderful people who do a lot. You don't try to over control it. You focus on the 80/20 rule. What are those things that really make a difference and not all the things? But above all, you still take care of yourself. So I get enough sleep. I think we do a lot of things we don't have to do. I think we waste a lot of energy. We don't have to waste being bothered by things, being irritated by things. So keeping a more quiet mind that doesn't sweat the small stuff is one of the keys to making that happen for me. Now, you mentioned earlier about the low point in your career is when you sold a company, the stock went to the tank and you knew you made the wrong decision. And now you're a part of hydrogen struggles. How did you convince yourself that you were picking the right partner? Well, first of all, I knew that what we had needed to have a broader audience in the world in my lifetime anyway, but I wanted to really get the message to more people. We didn't have enough of a global presence, for example. While we got an office in the UK, we didn't. And so we needed to find a partner and it was global. We also needed to find a partner where ideally new CEOs and CHROs are coming in because they always want to work in the culture, new leaders like you were at KFC. And so we said, well, actually, it should be a search partner to be great. And we liked the culture we ran into as we talked to different search firms at Hydric, and they've been a great partner. As you look at your business and your life going forward, what do you see as your unfinished business? I would have said a couple of years ago, getting the message down. But in writing the book, the mood elevator is more about kind of my journey and my beliefs, my underlying fundamental beliefs there. So when I wrote that book, that is one of my thing on my bucket list that I want to get done. I'd like to do some things more in the health world. I'd like to publish your Ask Me to Write a book called Secrets of an 80-year- old triathlete. Kind of sharing with the world how you do that because people say, how do you do that? I'd like people to have an answer for that. And so my personal purpose, David, is to provide understanding and inspiration for more and more people to live life at their best, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. And that's what I'm working towards. I think I've done a pretty good job on the mentally and emotionally and in my personal life and the spiritual, but I still haven't impacted the world enough in terms of physically. So that's one thing on my bucket list. Getting that personal purpose is really key to fulfilling life. It is, absolutely. And Larry, I have to tell you as we wrap this up, you have enriched my life and so many others by helping me understand myself better, helping me be better a leader. So thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. At the top of the show, I talked about how Larry helps others be at their best. But the only way ideas really take shape is when the people that we lead embrace them and make them their own. And the thing that I really love about Larry and his process is that he developed training tools that would allow people to decide for themselves what is really important . Let me tell you about one that I just absolutely love. You know, Larry had this training where we talked about what kind of moves we have throughout the day. And guess what? We make our worst decisions when we're angry and resentful and tired, but we make our best decisions when we're grateful. So for me and everybody else in our company, we tried to keep that in mind whenever we were making big decisions. We tried to get our mood elevator up, getting that state of gratitude so we'd make our decisions with the clearest possible mind. And the other thing is, individually, we tried to go to work with an attitude of gratitude. And for me personally, I wake up every day and I write down three things at a minimum that I'm grateful for so that I can move my mood elevator up. And you know, when you get in that state of gratitude, somehow people just like being around you and the environment just gets so much better. And Larry taught all of us how to really make that happen. So here's what I want you to do this week. I want you to use his mood elevator tool and I want you to start every day with gratitude. Before you even go to work, before you jump in emails or your full day of meetings, take five minutes and write down a few things that you're grateful for. This will help you get your day started on a positive note. But I have another thing I want you to do. Think about the mood elevator every time you make a decision. And I guarantee you, that will help you get into a state of mind that will help you make your best decisions. I have to tell you, I think Larry Sin is an absolute genius. He really knows how to create work environments where people can be their best. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders build cultures that help people be at their best. 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 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] [ Silence ]