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Crack the Code and Master Modern Leadership with Alain Hunkins

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Alain Hunkins, author of CRACKING THE LEADERSHIP CODE: Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders is a sought-after speaker, consultant, trainer, and coach. Over his twenty-year career, he has led over 2,000 groups in 25 countries. Alain’s clients include Wal-Mart, Pfizer, Citigroup, General Electric, State Farm Insurance, IBM, General Motors, and Microsoft. 

Alain has designed and facilitated seminars on numerous leadership topics, including team building, conflict management, communication, peak performance, innovation, engagement, and change. Alain serves on the faculty of Duke Corporate Education and has published over 400 articles on leadership.

  • Some of the most incredible insights, lessons, data, and stories from years of studying leadership. 

  • Why the post office thought removing all the clocks from its offices would solve their customer complaint issues. 

  • Experience from writing over 400 articles on leadership and working with some of the world’s top companies. 

  • What caused Alain to begin his study of leadership and lifelong passion?

  • Some incredible stories of both good and bad leadership decisions. 

  • What do all good leaders have in common? What do all bad leaders have in common?

  • How effective leadership has changed over the past several decades and why “Old School” leadership doesn’t lead to results anymore. 

    • I just need a pair of hands, not the brain that comes attached to them. 

  • How can you inspire others to do their best work and excel?

  • The main characteristics of leadership...

    • Connection

    • Communication

    • Collaboration

  • Are you a bad leader and not aware of it?

  • The shocking leadership stats and what employees say about their current leadership. 

  • Should you be totally honest as a leader?

  • How do you balance empathy as a leader? You want to be there for employees but you don’t want to end up being anyone's therapist. 

  • A few simple ways to make sure you’re communicating effectively as a leader. 

  • As a leader, the ego is our enemy, we must be able to adjust our beliefs based on new data. 

  • Why patience is the leading cause of lack of empathy and shortness towards co-workers. 

  • Be humble - leadership is not about you it’s about the people you are leading. 

Thank you so much for listening!

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet, bringing the world's top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fabel. 

[00:00:19] AF: Welcome to another episode of the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with over 5 million downloads and listeners like you in over 100 countries. In this episode, we hope you crack the leadership code and dig into what the studies research show about effective leadership with our guest, Alain Hunkins. Alain digs into some of the unbelievable stories of both good and bad leadership at some extremely large and recognizable organizations. We discussed the role of empathy and leadership, and even more. 

Are you a fan of the show have you been enjoying our interviews with the world's top experts? If so, you need to head to successpodcast.com and sign up for our email list. You will receive a time of exclusive subscriber content as well as our free course we put a ton of time into called How to Create Time For What Matters Most in Your Life. You'll get that and so much more value and content on a weekly basis directly from our team. Sign up now at successpodcast.com. Or if you're on the move, text 44222 to SMARTER. That's S-M-A-R-T-E-R on your phone to subscribe on the go. 

Last week, we dug into the science of aging and how we can rollback our own biological clock with Dr. David Sinclair. Now, let’s talk about this week's guest, Alain Hunkins. Alain is the author of Cracking the Leadership Code: 3 Secrets to Building Strong Leaders. He is a sought-after speaker, consultant, trainer and coach. Over his 20 year career, he's led over 2000 groups in 23 countries. Alain’s client list includes Walmart, Pfizer, Citigroup, General Electric, State Farm, and even more. He has designed and facilitated seminars on numerous leadership topics including teambuilding, conflict in management, communication, peak performance, innovation, engagement and change. Alain lot serves on the faculty of the Duke Corporate Education and has published over 400 articles on leadership. I had a great time speaking with Alain. We still keep in touch frequently via email, and I know you're going to get a ton of value out of this conversation no matter who you are. 

So without further delay, we give you Alain Hunkins. 

[00:02:36] AF: Alain, welcome to the Science of Success. 

[00:02:39] AH: Thanks so much, Austin. It’s a delight to be with you here today. 

[00:02:43] AF: Well, we’re really excited to have you on. I mean, it’s where we get to speak with somebody with such an extensive background as yours. I mean, over 400 articles written on leadership. You’ve worked with some of the country and the world’s biggest companies and I can’t wait to dig in to some of the leadership lessons you’ve learned there. But I’d like to start, for listeners who may not be as familiar, give us your background. I’m very curious, what led you down this path to start studying something like leadership?

[00:02:43] AH: Yeah, it’s interesting. Certainly, it’s not the kind of thing that when you’re growing up in 6 and 7 years old you think, “I’m going to be a leadership student and expert later in my life.” Not something I thought. But if I had to see a common threat, I have always been fascinated by people. Why do we do what they do? What is the science behind what motivates people? Ever since I was a kid, I was always really interested in this. And when I got to college, I studied liberal arts, so I dabbled in a lot of everything. But certainly, behavior and psychology was really important. Actually, was a minor in psychology for a while, and then I got really interested in theater.

Actually, after I graduated undergrad, I went on to a graduate school acting conservatory, where for three years I was under the microscope. Literally, just taking a look at how did I behave? How did I move? How did I speak? Really, picking apart the specific behaviors that you put back together as a performer. And from there I moved into working in schools using arts in education to teach leadership and conflict resolution skills to junior high school kids and high school kids in hard hit neighborhoods in New York City. And then I transitioned from there, moved into working doing leadership training in organizations and corporations, which is where I’ve spent the bulk of the last 23 years. 

So what I found was is that in working with thousands and thousands of groups of leaders is that I started to recognize patterns of behavior. Is that great leaders do certain things in common. You know what? So do mediocre leaders. They also do things in common. So I tried to figure out what were those patterns, and I started to see them and take notes. Those notes turned into blog posts. And the blog posts turned into chapter. So I wrote this book, Cracking the Leadership Code, because I wanted to help people to accelerate their learning curve. When I think of leadership, I don’t think of a job title or a position. I think of leadership is any time that you’re trying to influence somebody else to do something. That’s leadership. And there are better ways to do it and there are worst ways to do it, and I want to help people to be able to do it better. 

[00:05:07] AF: Yeah. I love that definition of leadership, and I think it’s interesting to hear you say that good leaders all share certain things in common. Mediocre leaders share certain things in common. And I think we found that to be true here as well. I mean, at the Science of Success, we’ve spent the past 5 years in reviewing some of the world’s top performers. Really, it’s funny, but you wouldn’t think so. But a bestselling author and psychology expert has a lot more in common with an FBI hostage negotiator who also has a lot more in common with an extreme sports psychology consultant. It’s these common threads that bring all these people together as high-performance, and obviously as leaders too. I really can’t wait to dig in to some of these commonalities. 

But before we do, in your book and your TED Talk both you share this story about a company whose dealing with customers complaining about long wait times and some of the solutions they went through. Do you mind sharing that story? I found it to be so engaging and comical, but a really kind of great point to kind of set the stage.   

[00:05:59] AH: Oh, yeah. This goes back in 2007. Yeah, the leaders of a very large and well-known organization found they have this big problem on their hands, which was basically that their customer expectations were way higher than their customer service. The customers were basically complaining. And the big thing that the customers were complaining about was wait times in all of their retail locations. They had retail locations all over the place and people were waiting too long. And so being that they’re good leaders, what do they do? They put together an 87 page strategic planning report about how they were going to solve this. After all this work, what they did come up with? They actually decided to address the issue that people felt they were waiting in line too long. They took the clocks out of all of the lobbies of their organization. That’s a true story and that was the US Postal Service. 

Yeah, basically, everyone was at the Post Office going, “This is taking too long.” So they took the clocks out of the lobbies, which is crazy, right? I mean, if you step back, you think that is just insane. And yet that was done. And they gave this wonderful spin. They said we were creating uniformity. But the fact is at the end of the day, you can’t blame the strategy. You can’t blame the execution. There were people, there were leaders who made those decisions. And I think for anyone who’s worked in a large organization, you can hear that story and laugh, but you also kind of scratch your head, because you think, “You know what? That kind of sounds familiar, like something that I’ve experienced.” Because leaders do some stupid stuff sometimes, and that is just a classic example of it. 

[00:07:27] AF: It really is such a comical example too, but it’s just interesting. I mean, you point out, leaders made that decisions, but it just kind of really illustrates the disconnect between not only a customer’s problem and a solution, but also leadership understanding of what the problem is and how to ultimately attack it. 

[00:07:42] AH: Yeah. I mean, this is the issue, is that recognizing that the decisions that leaders make in an organization, there is multilayers particularly in large ones like a Postal Service, is that you have to understand that there's this larger system. When I talk with leaders, I oftentimes use – And this will be little harder without the visual. But if you can imagine a pendulum like you’re holding a string with a rock tied in the bottom, right? Leaders at the top where your fingers are holding the string – So all you have to do is move a little bit back and forth, but then that rock on the bottom of the pendulum start swinging wildly. And what leaders need to recognize is the little decisions when we’re misaligned cause huge ripple effects that the people at the bottom or the frontlines are the ones that are trying to clean up the mess and deal with. I think that's a good example with the Postal Service of how these little stupid decisions up here become monumental at the frontlines. 

[00:08:35] AF: Yeah. And that's a great analogy too. Let's dig in. I'm really, really excited. I’ve got a copy of the book right here, Cracking the Leadership Code. I recommend everybody go out and get a copy. It's a very easy read. The end of the chapter summaries really make it something that you can kind of apply and really, really structure as well into your head. But before we really get into the new leaders, this was two years ago, your TED Talk, but one of the statistics you shared was less than 25% of people think that their leaders are good leaders. 

In your book, you mentioned the new style of leadership, which I really can't wait to get into. But leading with purpose, connecting with empathy, all those things, and I totally agree. But before we go into this new style of leadership, you also mentioned this old school leadership and it stopped working. First off, what is old school leadership and why do you think we've moved away from old school leadership and why is it less effective today?

[00:09:25] AH: Yeah. Old school leadership really dates back to the dawn of the industrial age. That's where it started. In fact, it's old school back then. But leaders have continued to use what I'll call in inherited leadership legacy. A lot of people are still using a lot of these techniques, but if you think about, the first organizations in the business world were factories. And basically you suddenly had thousands of employees and someone had to figure out, “How are we can organize them? How are we going to manage them? How are we going to lead them?” And the people they went to were actually mechanical engineers. 

And they saw leadership as a mechanistic problem to be solved. So in their world, at the time, you got to remember, 95% of the workforce was doing repetitive manual labor on the assembly line. And so the goal for leadership was to get the employees to basically crank out as many widgets on the widget factory line as possible where they really didn't want people thinking. They saw management was the brains and leadership was the brawn. In fact, there’s a great quote from Henry Ford who founded the Ford Motor Company. He said, “Why is it every time I want a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?” 

So there was this sense of old school leadership was about command-and-control, where the world was pretty constant. So, go back to Ford. Ford produced the Model T as their main car for 27 years. Production never changed. It was the same car, right? We don't live in that world anymore and we don't have people who are just a pair of hands. We live in this knowledge worker economy where we need people to be thinking creatively and problem solving on their own where it isn't just this repetitive old school to do what I tell you because I'm your boss. That’s why. I mean, that didn't work so well back then, and it certainly doesn't work now. 

What leaders have to recognize is how much of that old school leadership have they brought forward. Do you default to this “because I'm your boss that's why” attitude at times? If you do it, it’s certainly limiting you. That's where it comes from. Really, if we look at where the workforce is today where 59% of us are Gen Y and Gen Z. Today, we’ve got tools like LinkedIn. We got a Glassdoor. People know where the grass is greener. With the transparency that we have today, people know that there are better jobs up the street. I'm going to leave and go somewhere else, because we also don't have the promise of a career for life. And so the game has totally shifted. The world has totally shifted, but leadership technology really hasn't kept pace. 

And so the rest of the book and the rest of my work around becoming this new school leader is a way for leaders to be able to address the real world that we are living in as supposed to trying to lead something that has been dead for 75 years. 

[00:12:23] AF: Yeah. Many, many great points there. When I think of old school leadership, I think of like the foreman and the factory and, “Well, if you don't do the job. I'll find somebody else who can.” There's like very little thought there, as you pointed out, and I think as we shift to this new work environment, we do need people that are going to be thinking through things, problem-solving. We need to find the right people and make sure as a leader that we can develop people and guide them to become these types of people that can work on their own, can strategically think and can problem solve on their own. And I think it really all starts in kind of setting that value on that kind of thinking at the top and letting your employees know that their thoughts are valued but also making sure productivity remains constant.

[00:13:08] AH: Oh, completely. And you really touched on a great point here, Austin, which is you want to care for people and get their input and value them. And at the same time, you want to make sure that productivity remains constant. So, we kind of boil those into two categories. We’ll call it people, and we’ll call it profit, because they both start with P, and it's fun. 

So you’ve got these two categories, and they’re both important. And what I have found my research is while they're both important to be effective and sustainable and successful long-term, it's a question of prioritizing. Is that if you really want to succeed long-term, you need to put the people side before the profit. Because if you try to profit and then hope that the people will catch up, you're going to lose. Because, let's face it, it doesn't matter what industry you're in. You can be in technology, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, high-tech, you’re in the people business. 

First and foremost, we are leading people. And so having at least the basic psychological understanding of what motivates people. What drives them? What connects them? What helps them to understand? Is basically the fundamental requisite to becoming a good leader, because you're dealing with people, and that's what I was trying to explore and to break down into some specific tools that people could use, so you go, “Oh! I never thought of that. But now that you say it, that makes complete sense.” Bridging the gap between what people know and what they do. 

[00:14:29] AF: Yeah. And I think it's such a great point that, really, everyone's in the people business. And to piggyback off something you said earlier. Back in the old school method, if my boss was a jerk, that message really didn't leave my home town, right? I mean, I might go to the bar and be like, “Oh! My boss is just such a jerk. He doesn't understand.” But now, I can post that online like on like what you mentioned, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and all of the sudden the word really gets out there. So if you don't focus on your people, they have a lot larger of a megaphone now than they did. It's not just gossip at the watering hole. It’s something that anybody can search and find. 

[00:15:04] AH: Oh, completely. I mean, I share the example in the book about Susan Fowler who is an engineer at Uber. And she decided, she had her own personal blog post and she posted this article about her long, very strange year at Uber where she talked about all the crazy sexual harassment that she had been putting up with. Well, that blog post went viral and that was the catalyst that forced the top 20, 25 executives at Uber to have to step down, including the CEO. And Uber’s market share took a massive hit. And like you said, she had a platform that wasn't available to anyone even 15 years ago because of the level of technology and transparency that we have today. 

[00:15:45] AF: Yeah. So powerful. 

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[00:17:02] AF: I want to kind of zoom out real quick, because I want to dig in to some of the meat of the book, because there are a lot of things that I want to discussed. In the book, you go through these master keys of your framework. Walk us through these master keys and what they are.

[00:17:13] AH: Sure. There are three master keys or I call the three secrets to building strong leaders. The first one is connection. Because at its heart, leadership is a relationship, and the quality of that relationship is based on the quality of the connection. There is connection. The next one is around communication. And communication is obviously critical to leadership’s success, because the goal of communication isn't communication itself. The goal is creating shared understanding. And the reason that shared understanding is so important is because creating a platform of shared understanding is what enables you to make great decisions to get great results. So that’s the second, is communication. The third is collaboration. Is that what great leaders recognize is that for people to perform at their best, they need in environment in which they can thrive. 

And so the role of leaders is to create an environment and do so intentionally, as supposed to just unconsciously. Because the fact is every leader creates an environment. Some do it by default and others do it by design. And so connection, and communication, and collaboration become the master keys of strong leaders.

[00:18:27] AF: It’s such a nice way of breaking it down, and I've always been really intrigued by the role of empathy when it comes to leaders, because as we touched on. On one hand, you have to hold people accountable. You have to look at the bottom line. But you also need to connect and kind of be understanding. And I think a lot of folks really struggle to find that balance, right? Because on one hand, you want to be able to speak your employees. You want to be able to connect with them on a personal level. But on the other hand, you're not a therapist, right? So, what does effective empathy look like as a leader? 

[00:18:58] AH: You bring up a great point. Yeah, that people are not therapist. You don't have to be a therapist to be an empathic leader. What you basically need to do is expand what we’ll call empathic circle. Let us define empathy first overall so we’re all on the same playing field with that. So empathy is showing people that you understand them and care how they feel. Now, I know that sounds so basic and so human, “Of course, I can do that.” 

Well, you probably do it really easily with the people in your family and your friends and the people that you really care about. And actually the science shows and they’ve actually put people on MRI machines and shown this. It’s fascinating research. Is that when we already feel connected the way we do with family members, the brain centers that feel empathy light up. But when there are strangers, they don't light up. 

So the challenge for us at work is to expand our empathy circle so that our colleagues and our coworkers and our employees are in that circle. In fact, I share this story a lot about a guy named Glen that I worked with. Glenn is a manager at a hospitality company, and I was working with Glen and a bunch of his colleagues we’re talking about the subject of beliefs, and I was saying to them how beliefs can change over time. They’re not just fixed even though in the moment they feel like they’re really fixed. 

To illustrate the point, I said, “So, can anyone here think of something that you once believed that you no longer believe?” Now, as you hear that question, Austin, probably what comes to mind are things like Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy, right? Because that pretty much everyone says when I say what’s something you want to believe that you no longer believe? 

I asked this to the group with Glen, and Glen raises his hand. He said, “Yeah, something I want to believe that no longer believe. That's easy. I never really liked people a lot.” And I went, “Hold on a second. Where is this guy going?” I’m thinking to myself. And he went on. He said, “Yeah. At work, I was a real SOB. I thought my job was to tell people what to do and their job is to shut up and do it.” At this point, I'm thinking that my entire day is going off the rails. 

But then suddenly Glen shifts, he says, “But all that changed two years ago. Because two years ago my wife was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer and people out of the woodwork just started showing up making meals for my family, doing pickups and drop offs my kids, and it completely restored my faith in humanity. And what I realizes is that people on my team is that they had families and issues too. And so instead of talking at them, I started talking with them. I’d like think I'm not the same SOB I used to be.”

So what I found from Glen’s story is Glen had this wake-up call. First, he was on the receiving end of his other people empathy. And then once he was in their circle by being thought of, he was able to turn around and give it. And so I think for a lot of us, particularly at work, we hear that this is important. But the fact is to be empathic takes time and some patience and some willingness to let go of your own agenda. And I think so many of us are these type A achieving. We’re driving, try to get things done. We don't have enough time. There's too much to do. 

And so are we really willing to press pause and listen? So, until the COVID pandemic, I think for many people, saying, “Hey, how are you?” was just that social pleasantry. When the answer was like, “I'm fine. How are you.” You said it like, “Hi.” “Hi.” “How are you?” “I'm fine. How are you?” And that’s it. As supposed to now, I think we’re having much more real conversations of, “Hey, how are you holding up today?” and you actually want to hear what someone's thinking and feeling. 

The fact is – And there is great science behind this too, is that when employees feel cared for, it is the number one driver of workplace retention and engagement. The fact is, deep down, we actually all want to be cared for even the hard-driving people, because in their mind, being cared for means you see, recognize and value me and probably compensate me for it. Even everything like a type A stockbroker. They want to be cared for, but they may want in a different way. But it still being cared for in that environment. 

For us to recognize as leaders, we want to start building empathy, because empathy becomes the fast track to connection. Because when someone feels that you care about them, they're going to do better work. Think about it. If two people ask you to stay late and work on a project and one is a good friend and you care about them and they care about you and the other isn't, which one are you going to want to work for? It's so obvious. 

So, people don't work because they have to. They'll comply because they have to, but they won't really commit unless they want to. And empathy is the means for which to happen. I think it was Teddy Roosevelt. This quote has been attributed to a lot of other people. But I think he's the one who said, “People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.” And I know that sounds cheesy is heck, but it's true. It's true. 

I think particularly now, we’re seeing this in terms of the COVIT pandemic, is realizing who's showing up to show that they’re caring about people? Because we will all be remembered at the end of this crisis for how we showed up, and we will either be seen as better or worse. But we won't be the same, because the world won't be the same. For me, that's the basis of empathy. 

[00:23:54] AH: Wow! I mean, there’s so much to unpack there. That's incredible answer with a lot of great insights. I think the piece about Glen receiving the effective empathy, really kind of showing him how important it was really hits home with me. And there's a great chart in the book on page 78 that kind of goes through like what happens if someone doesn't have empathy or if they don’t have time for it? And it seems like a lot of the reason that we’re not empathetic, it’s because we get busy. We lose our patience. But then when you look at the other side of the coin, showcasing this empathy only takes a matter of seconds. How can we take a step back? And if we are busy, if we are going a mile a minute. We know we have another call in 10 minutes. We’re doing XYZ and someone approaches us. How can we reset ourselves from this busy, kind of crazy all over the place mindset to remember to be empathetic?

[00:24:45] AH: That’s an excellent question, Austin. I think the fact is, in the moment, if someone comes up and you’re crazy busy, and that will be a good time to do it. If you haven't practiced it before, I highly doubt you're going to being able to do it on the spot. I mean, let's face it. It's like anything else. Habits develop over time. And what I would suggest for anyone is if you want to start practicing empathy – And there're some simple things that you can do. You can start your listening with purpose. Just asking a question, “Hey, how are you, really?” and asking people to go beyond I'm fine how are you, is to start to build and structure of those moments into your day at times that you're not feeling the pressure. So that way in that moment when you should do it, you'll actually have some muscle memory to be able to draw on, because otherwise you won’t be able to do it. I mean, none of us can unless we do it regularly. 

So, that's probably the place to start, is to build in opportunities. I mean, we should be checking in with our people on a consistent basis. I know that, years ago, Gallup came up with this wonderful book called First, Break All The Rules, and they have these Gallup 12 questions. And one of them was has someone in the last seven days appreciated my work?

And it's funny, as I shared that statistic with people I work with, they said, “Seven days? I’d be happy with seven months.” It's amazing how long some of us can go without feeling cared for. But, again, this is going to sound cheesy. I’m going to use another analogy here, which is in some ways, we’re not that different from plants and flowers, right? They need to be watered and nurtured. And if we don't water and nurture those relationships, they're going to wither and they're going to die. And in the case of work, what that’s going to mean is that people are going to start checking out other job opportunities. Because, look, if you're not giving me a compelling reason to stay, if I'm not feeling engaged, if someone down the block will offer me similar disengaged work but will give me 15% more money, I'm out of here. You got to give me a compelling reason to stay.

[00:26:36] AF: Yeah. And I think it's worth noting again, the effect it can have on morale and productivity just to thank somebody for their work even out of the blue is just tremendous. And as we've mentioned a couple of times even among this COVID 19 pandemic we’re facing right now. All the conference calls I've had, typically, we just jump right in. It’s like, “All right. Everybody is here. Let's start.” 

If I show up a little early and there're a couple people there, we have a nice conversation about how this is affecting everybody. But it ultimately yields to a much better conversation, because I have some sort of context, “Okay. I know that John, his kids are out of daycare. So he’s got kids running around. Mary just made a joke about how she's in Florida, because she's isolating there.” It's really kind that adds so much to the process. And then even internally, we’re not dealing with other folks or outside of your organization. But even inside, there're a lot of people at least in our company who have been working overtime to try to address some of the needs that have risen from this crisis. And I've been trying to make a point just to stop every day and at least thank somebody for going the extra mile. Or, “Hey, I know you've been working a little bit late this week. I really want you to know, I appreciate it. The work is looking great.” And it just not only creates this boost in productivity, but they become friends, right?

Now, we have like hour-long phone calls, go for a walk and chitchat with people that previously I had a work relationship with, but it's blossomed into – Blossomed, to use the plant analogy, into something much deeper, which ultimately makes our working relationship much more effective as well.

[00:28:04] AH:  Completely. As you sure that, it reminds me of this guy, and I actually share this story in the book too, this guy Matt, who's a district manager, actually for a fast food franchise. One of the largest food franchises in the world, and he is actually ranked. There’re 100 district managers in the company, and Matt is now number one on their list. He has been for a couple years. When I met Matt, he was number one. I said that, “Matt, have you always been the number one district manager?” And he said, “No. Actually, when I started years ago, I was like number 84.” I said, “So, what changed?” 

So very much to your point, Austin, what he realized is when he started, he used to think of work that his job was to be the fixer. He would see what was wrong. He had to solve problems and go in and tell people what to do. And he actually saw – His words he said, “I saw people like worker bees. Actually, in some cases, I’d come into the restaurants and I didn't know some people's names. They’d come. They’d go. I didn't even know who they were. But when I realized my job, and people don't want to fixers. What they want is they want a leader.” 

So he’d start coming in and started shifting. He started saying, “Oh, hey. How was your weekend?” Like what you're saying. Building some personal relationships. And instead of coming in with a list of things that were wrong and telling them what to do, he’d say, “So, this is what I have on my list. What do you think is going on?” and having them generate their own solutions. And what he found was as he started doing all that, his performance numbers started going up because people took more ownership of what was going on. And the way he described it to me, the kicker of the story is, he said, “So, I'm number one now.” He said, “My work is so much easier than it was when I was ‘78, and I'm having so much more fun because I'm building these great relationships. And a lot of my former store managers are now my colleagues and have been promoted to district manager.” 

For me, it's the sense that we think, “Oh, I don't have time. I’ve got a job to do.” Like, “No. Actually, your job is to build relationship. And maybe if you saw it as an investment of work, you might think of it differently.” It's this giant reframe, if that makes sense.

[00:29:52] AF: Yeah. It's great. One thing that I just know to my head when you said that is all the people he works with get promoted. It’s like a rising tide raises all ships, right? As the people that he's been empathetic with and have helped have increased their careers, it's going to ultimately increase his cloud and the organization in general. 

I think it's a really great example, because he didn't start being empathetic, right? He started, it was either ‘84, ’87, and of the leaders, now he’s number one. I think that going back to Glen, even, was a belief of mind that changed over time. And for the longest time, I've felt like we all kind of that fixed skillsets. I'm not very good at X. I’m pretty good at Y. There's no way I'll ever be good at X. And I don't really have to work hard to be good at Y. But that's changes, right? I mean, everything, like empathy. These are things like muscles. I mean, we can strengthen them over time and we can start working on something we’re not good at and ultimately be great at it and reap the benefits that we may be used to look at someone who it was so easy with and we’re like, “Oh, I wish I had that.” Well, you can have that as long as you're willing to put in the time and maybe be a little bit uncomfortable to increase that skillset. Now, I'm not going to be like play in the NBA anytime soon. I mean, some things are a little fixed. But when it comes to these soft skills and nuanced approaches to things, we can get better over time. 

I want to kind of transition. I think we’ve spent a lot of time on empathy, but communication. And you spend a lot of time too, and I kind of want to tie this a little bit together. But one thing I really enjoy about the book is you give a lot of attention to like little things that really kind add up over time. One thing that I loved was being on time to meetings and calls. Why is it so important that we give the attention to these small things and what is it say when we don't to the people that we work with?

[00:31:32] AH: Yeah. It’s so important to give attention to these small things, because as leaders, we have to recognize that we are under a microscope. That everything that we do and say gets watched. Everything that we don't do and say gets watched. And people are putting their little rating scorecard together. 

And so, for example, showing up on time. It's the simplest thing to measure or not. You’re either here or you're not. For me, recognizing what is my leadership behavior communicating to other people? Because, example, is the main thing in influencing other people. It isn’t what we say. It’s what we do. And so something as simple as showing up on time sends a very clear message. Just how you greet people. 

I’ll share another story around just the power of recognizing that you're always being watched. I was working with a group of flight attendants who were at a customer service conference in Chicago and one of flight attendants came over to me on a break and said, “I just got to tell you something about this company. I know we’re doing this training, but frankly, this is all a bunch of hypocrites.” I said, “Well, tell me more. What do you mean?” She said, “I’ll give you an example. Classic example.” She said, “I flew over here from Germany to do this training, and I was working the flight. I was actually working the first-class cabin.” So this is not business class. This is international first class. So these are the top-tier customers who are paying well over $10,000 a ticket to do this. 

She is trained. She’s a skilled professional. She said, “I'm on this flight, and who walks in to sit in first class? It’s none other than one of our very, very senior executives. Who you’d see their face in the airline magazine.” And this executive comes in the plane, sits down, and you think – Because we've all been trained to go around and greet people, shake their hands. Thank you for your business, thank you for your loyalty, to build relationship, that he would model that. That he would do that. No. He just sits in the chair. He pulls out his laptop. He doesn't even say hello to me. Sits there the whole flight. We get to Chicago. He doesn't even say thank you, and gets off the plane, right? 

What's amazing is we don't ever get to hear that executive side of the story. We don’t know. Maybe he had this giant deadline. Maybe he had a death in the family. Maybe he wasn't feeling well. But you know what? That's the intention. That's not what we get. That flight attendant, all she got was the behavior of I don't care enough to say hi or thank you to you, which again it's a communication, but it's also a connection piece. 

And so we have to realize that we have to become metacognitive. Thinking about thinking and thinking about behavior at that broader scale. What's the message I want to send? And the more conscious that we start showing up like, “Oh, if I'm on time. What does that say? What does that say about my track record?”

When I learned that from a mentor – By the way, everything I’ve learned, I learned from somebody else. I remember, I used to start showing up on time. And then at the beginning, I get really upset because other people wouldn't be on time. Like, “Well, I made the effort. I'm on time to time. Why aren’t they on time?” What I realized, Austin, after a while, I made peace with that. Because I said to myself, “You know, I don't show up on time for them. I show up on time for me. Because that's the kind of person that I want to be.” 

I am a firm believer that when you build these consistent habits, they're going to pay dividends. Now, they may not pay it in that moment, and you might feel like you're being left out on alert because you're there on time and someone else is not. But overall, like we’re saying before with the habit of being empathetic, you can't pull it out of a hat if you haven’t been practicing it. I think building these habits of connection, of communication, of collaboration consistently, repeatedly, over time is what's going to set you on the fast track towards leadership success. 

[00:34:57] AF: Yeah, I love it. Digging into communication a little bit more, what are the pillars of effectively communicating as a leader? I mean, I speak to hundreds of people every week, and I've experienced good communication, bad communication. And in most cases, poor communication, at least I think is not intentional. But in all cases, it causes confusion. A lot of times wasted effort, work, when direction isn’t clear. And even in my personal case, some anxiety. If I'm not clear or I’m not communicated with, I’m like, “Am I doing all right? What's going on here? What can I possibly do?” What are the pillars of starting to communicate effectively as a leader?

[00:35:33] AH: Yeah, you bring up such an important point, because the fact is, yeah, no one intends to be a lousy communicator, and yet only 30% of people think that their leaders communicate well. It's a shockingly low number. The biggest problem behind it is we have this gap. The fact is, all of our information and our understanding and our insights is 100% crystal clear to us in our own brains, in our own minds. Like, “Of course, I know what I mean.” But that’s not communication. That's what your understanding of it. 

And so, we have to get alignment between what we mean, what we actually say, whether that's verbal, or written, or email, or whatnot, and what is heard, right? There are three parts. What I mean? What I say and what you hear. And most of those times, things are not in alignment. I was going to jump to some quick solutions around things you can do. 

Number one is do you have a clear central message to what you're trying to say? Do you have a goal? What is that central method? Your central message should be concise, like eight words or less concise. If people can only remember one thing, what would that message be? Because so many of us have all this information, and all the studies will say that people can only remember between 10% and 20% of a group of content anyway. So, you want to make sure it is the right 10% to 20%. 

First, do you have a very clear central message? And then how do you support your central message with simple logic that bills? Whether that’s data points, whether that stories that illustrate it, because stories bring it to life. Do you repeat your central message multiple times? Look, advertisers know this all too well, right? We always hear the same thing over and over again. I'm sure there are jingles from commercials you can remember from your childhood because you heard them so many times. So, do we repeat ourselves multiple times? 

And then another really important piece of clear communication is what are we doing to confirm that the other person has understood us? And I call this asking for a receipt. If you think about what a receipt, it’s like, in life, we get receipts as a confirmation of a completed transaction. You go to the store, you buy a candy bar. Now it's a candy bar. And if you spend $0.25, $0.30 or something, you might think, “I don’t need the receipt.” But you would never dream of buying a house without getting a receipt, right? The more important the transaction, the more likely we are to get a receipt. 

In fact, a great story that brings this to life comes from the fast food industry. Because back in the 1980s when they introduced the drive-throughs, the whole process was a nightmare. It’s really common for customers to come up to a drive-through, go to the intercom and place their order and then they drive up to the window to pick up their food and it will be all wrong. And this was consistent for the years across the industry. And then all of a sudden, drive-through mistake rates just plummeted, and it wasn't some new technology. It was super simple. What happened was the employees started asking for receipts. 

If you said, “I’d like to order two hamburgers, a cheeseburger, three fries and three cokes.” What they would do is say, “Okay.” They repeated that, right? Two burgers, a cheeseburger, three fries and three Cokes. And you can either say yes or not, right? It's just confirming what you just heard. Now, again, it sounds so simple, but that one little change makes such a difference. And I think so many of us have the experience of being in meeting, business meetings, or whatever. And then as the meeting is ending, like, “Okay. We’re out of time. Everyone knows what they're doing. Right?” And of course everyone says yes, because we’re all professional adults. We would never stop and say no, because that's way too embarrassing. So, we all assume that we’re all on the same page. And then I'm sure you’ve had this experience, Austin, many of the listeners will have to. We go out in the hall, we have the meeting after the meeting, “So, what did Austin say he’s doing? What is –” We’ve all had that experience, right? Because we didn’t take the time to confirm. We didn't take the time to asking for a receipt in the moment. 

And so because we want to get that understanding, because after we get that understanding is, one, we want to be able to go off and take action on that, and that's why you get that anxiety of like, “Am I doing the right thing? Am I not doing the right thing?” Because we want to feel like the actions are built on this solid foundation of we’re doing the right thing based on understanding as supposed to misunderstanding. 

[00:39:32] AF: Yeah. I think that’s so huge, and the fast food example really brings that to life. It's not some new tech. It's not like some crazy thing that's going to take years to implement within your large organization. I mean, it's just a confirmation that the message that she tried to convey was received the way that you meant to convey it.

[00:39:49] AH: Exactly. Exactly. 

[00:39:51] AF: So, I want to kind of start wrapping up a little bit here. I know you're very busy and I want to be respectful of your time. But this has been a great conversation. And one thing that I just wanted to get your thoughts on is what role does being humble play in leadership?

[00:40:05] AH: Oh! What a great question. And it plays a huge role in leadership, because if we think about what does humility really mean. To me, humility is the willingness to take my very achievement-oriented, large, maybe competitive ego and put it aside, maybe temporarily, but the willingness to suppress it temporarily. And when I do that, when I get humble and I can kind of put my own agenda in my own thinking about how things should work aside, I am actually freed up to better listen to you. And also, when you are humble, you create this great shift, whereas you realize leadership at its core isn't about you as the leader. It's about the people you're leading. Because we want to say what makes a successful leader. Well, when the people they’re leading are successful, then the leader is successful. 

Being humble lets you basically make yourself the least important person. When I coach leaders, I often say, “As a leader, you are both the most important person and the least important person.” And I think humility is the wisdom of knowing which role to step into. And I have to get out of the way, because like we said, leadership is this relationship, and being humble is what allows me to step into being of service to the people on leading. And if I don't get into that place of humility, I'm basically leading for my own arrogance or my own ego. 

I’ll just tell a quick story about the power of lack of humility. This is a Fortune 100 company, manufacturing company, and I was brought into work with the CEO and the executive team, and this was a big deal. This was going to be for their annual conference where they had over 1,500 people. So I had them do a meet and greet with the CEO and the executive team. So I’m about to go in to the boardroom, the executive board room. But one of the senior vice presidents pulls me to a side and he said, “Alain, I got to tell you something before we go in there. So these guys,” and they were by the way all men. He said, “These guys, they run this company and they know they run this company.” When you go in there one word you never use is no. You can say maybe. You can say I'm not sure. Or I'll look into it. But you never say the word no directly to them.” And then he stopped and paused and he says, “Do you understand?” And then he waited like for a verbal yes as though I'm sitting in the exit row of a plane. Like, “Do you understand?” And I had to literally say Yes. And as I'm saying yes, inside I'm thinking, “This is flipping crazy. They had institutionalized a lack of humility.” I mean, what ego, what arrogance to think we don't want have anyone ever say no to us. Just think about what that was costing them. And here's the thing, is you might look at that company and say, “But they’re a Fortune 100 company.” I would say yes, they’re successful, but not because of their arrogance. They’re successful in spite of it. Think about how much more successful they could be. So, going back to your original question, yes, humility is tremendously important, because it frees us up to actually lead better. 

[00:43:01] AF: I think it’s a huge point. I'm glad that the research supports what I was thinking in my head. But I think part of being a good leader at least in the times that I've led people and the times that I've been led or mentored, it's about acknowledging that you yourself are also on a journey of progression, right? You don't have all the answers currently and you’re improving and you're dealing with maybe on a different level, but you're really dealing with a lot of the same things your employees are, especially if you’ve hired good people. You want to improve your skillset. You want to add new skills.

Of course, you need to have a basic understanding of what you do here. What means success? What doesn't mean success? But things like asking questions should always be encouraged even from leadership, because we’re all trying to improve ourselves, right? We’re all trying to be successful. We all want to be “masters of our field”, but we’re all on that journey together, and the journey really never stops. 

[00:43:53] AH: Yeah. And I think what you're getting at is this sense, this belief. I say take off the superhero cape, right? Like you said, leaders should ask questions. Stop trying to think that you need to be this all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful thing, because actually when you humanize yourself – And this is of course assuming that you've already built real human connection based on empathy. People appreciate it. They actually go, “Oh, you’re a human like me,” and people can identify and connect with that and they’re actually much more willing to engage with you. If you think that somehow you have to be this superhuman, it’s not what it's about. It's about being super human, right? There's a big difference between the two. 

[00:44:30] AF: Yeah. This has been such a great conversation. I’ve only got one more question, and then I want to make sure that people know where to find the book, where to find you, where they can engage with you. But you've obviously studied thousands and thousands of leaders and obviously published over 400 articles on leadership. When you look historically, or maybe not even historically, just in general, who do you think embodies what a leader should be?

[00:44:54] AH: Well, frankly, I’ll just give you present example of where we are and where we’re going for the world we’re in. I think the head of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, is just doing a marvelous job of showing how you can be humanistic, empathic and also delivering great results. Really clear boundaries.  Think of how she's dealt with the COVID pandemic. I mean, they basically eradicated the virus in New Zealand. And a lot that has to do with the kind of leadership that she's showing. So, you can have both. You can be kind of soft and caring and you can also deliver great results. I think that's a great example of someone who's doing it right now.

[00:45:31] AF: That's great. We’ll definitely link to all of that in the show notes. Alain, thank you so much for the time. This has been an incredible conversation. You asked me before the call what a homerun interview looks like. This is what a homerun interview looks like. It was incredible speaking with you. But I want to make sure that the listeners and the audience can find you. Where can they buy the book? Where can they engage with you in social media and learn more?

[00:45:51] AH: Yeah. The easiest place to find me, because my name has got that funny spelling, Alain. Easiest way is to go right to the book page, which is www.crackingtheleadershipcode.com. That will take you right to the book’s page where you can download the first chapter to get a preview of it and that links right to my alainhunkins.com websites. So it’d be right there. You can learn about all the other work that I do in helping people become stronger leaders. And there are also buttons there. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. That's where I do all of my social media work, is on LinkedIn. That's probably the easiest place to find me. 

Austin, thank you so much. It’s been a super homerun. Fun time talking with you today. So, thank you so much.

[00:46:28] AF: I appreciate. You made it easy on me. Listeners, please go check out the book. Again, it's Cracking the Leadership Code by Alain Hunkins. Check it out.

[00:46:38] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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