A Great Employee Doesn’t Happen by Accident
A great employee doesn't happen by accident. There's a difference between a great hire and a great employee. Wow. And we put so much emphasis in the business and leadership space on hiring great people. Obviously, I agree with that and I think that's really good and important to focus on.
Alex Judd:But I think we put so much emphasis on it that people kinda get this idea that it's like once you hire great people, you don't have to provide them with anything for them to be successful and engaged over time. When in reality, I actually think the opposite is true, that you can hire the best person on the planet and if you don't support them with clarity, ability, responsibility, authority, and accountability, which I think Kyle so concisely worded, those people will leave because they'll get frustrated.
Matt Aiken:Alright, Kyle. You posted this on on LinkedIn, and and I can't wait to have a conversation about it. I'm gonna read it. You said, a great employee doesn't happen by accident. As a leader, you're responsible for five ingredients.
Matt Aiken:Clarity. Do they know what success looks like? Ability. Do they have the skill to execute? Responsibility.
Matt Aiken:Do they own the outcome? Authority. Do they have the power to act? Accountability. Do they know how they are doing?
Matt Aiken:Remove one and things break. Without clarity, busy but misaligned. Without ability, motivated but overwhelmed. Without responsibility, talented but inconsistent. Without authority, accountable but powerless.
Matt Aiken:Without accountability, slow drift, lower standards, cultural decay. Many performance issues aren't character flaws. They're missing ingredients. Tell me about the genesis of this LinkedIn post.
Alex Judd:Well, first of all, how does it feel having that read back to you in Matt's voice?
Kyle Guemmer:It sounded way smarter in
Alex Judd:Matt's voice. Was pretty
Matt Aiken:good. Yeah.
Kyle Guemmer:The the Genesis is really... A couple different things inspired it. Number one, we talk about this principle of you're responsible to people, not for people a lot. And I I think this is a representation of what you are responsible to an employee for as a leader. And then the the second part of it was I talked to a lot of business owners who, shockingly, are frustrated with their employees and frustrated in a lot of different ways.
Kyle Guemmer:Everything depends on them. They're not taking ownership. They're not getting the results they want. And there was this one specific conversation where... That I was having, actually, when I was up in New York that just really highlighted the the authority part.
Kyle Guemmer:Someone wanted results from someone without giving them the authority to actually get those results, and that creates frustration for the employee. That creates frustration for the leader. And another principle is mostly clear is frustratingly unclear. And this is clarity. Like, those five points is clarity.
Kyle Guemmer:That's what you are responsible to your employees for. Mostly clear, which is a missing ingredient, is actually just frustratingly unclear and frustrating for everyone involved.
Matt Aiken:Yeah. Alex, what what sticks out either from the five ingredients or just what Kyle just went through?
Alex Judd:I I think the title sentence stands out. A great employee doesn't happen by accident. I think it's a kind of an indictment on the fact that there's a difference between a great hire and a great employee. Wow. And we put so much emphasis, in the business and leadership space on hiring great people.
Alex Judd:And, obviously, I agree with that, and I think that's really good and important to focus on. But I think we put so much emphasis on it that people kinda get this idea that it's like, once you hire great people, you don't have to provide them with anything for them to be successful engaged and engaged over time. When in reality, I actually think the opposite is true, that you can hire the best person on the planet, And if you don't support them with clarity, ability, responsibility, authority, and accountability, which I think Kyle's so, concisely worded in a really powerful way, those people will leave because they'll get frustrated.
Matt Aiken:Yeah. I love the idea of, like, there's a response. As as a leader, there's a responsibility to be working towards creating creating an environment for great employees. And we can take it for... Maybe not take it for granted.
Matt Aiken:Some people might read this list with a little bit of shame. Like, man, I'm not great at one of these five things.
Alex Judd:We're gonna walk through the
Matt Aiken:five things in a second. But what makes this so difficult or or what makes this... What blocks people from understanding that getting a great out... An employee is is something they're responsible for and something they can actually do.
Alex Judd:Can can I speak from my perspective? And then I'd love to know your thoughts. I I can speak from my, like, what prevents me from having these five things as a business owner is I think that all five cascade from the first one. Mhmm. Right?
Alex Judd:Like, if you don't have clarity, then... Or if you have 50% clarity, then the most you can ever have is 50% of the ability to discern someone else's ability to achieve an ambiguous outcome that we haven't clarified. You you can't give them clear ownership of something that you don't know what it actually is. And I think the tension... I don't think that it's necessarily something that I'm bad at.
Alex Judd:I actually think that it might even be a strength for me is clarifying outcomes. I think the thing that's challenging is when you have a small, lean, growing business that's in early stages, it's like you're still just trying to, like, figure out where your feet are. And maybe the thing that I'm not always good at is, in... I sometimes wait for clarity to come to me, and I think when I'm my best set of leader is I'm I'm not waiting for everything to become clear. I'm just making a choice and saying it would be better for us to wholeheartedly a 100% run at something than kind of half heartedly, in an unclear way, run at a couple different things.
Alex Judd:And and so I I guess that would be the challenge that I'd be interested to know if y'all have any follow-up thoughts on that is if you don't get crystal clarity on what you actually want, you can't have the other four things at any measure of excellence.
Kyle Guemmer:I've got something off of that that will take us in a different direction. Do you have any other thoughts for him?
Matt Aiken:Yeah. I mean, I think there's there's two, maybe we can call it ingredients for clarity or, metrics we're looking for. One is accuracy. Like, is it accurate? Is it clearly stated?
Matt Aiken:But also, is it complete? Mhmm. Is it a full picture of, what success looks like for that thing? You gotta you gotta make sure you're you're doing both completeness and accuracy. Mhmm.
Matt Aiken:Take take us where you wanna go with clarity.
Kyle Guemmer:Yeah. I I think there's a couple pieces to that that you you talked about is, especially if the owner is a visionary, they can just assume clarity.
Alex Judd:You hope have.
Kyle Guemmer:Talking. They got a lot to say and and really a lot to say about where they wanna go, and and a lot of those things are powerful. But when all of those things are coming at once, we just assume we've actually... Like, that that has happened without taking the time to get alignment on that or to put that on paper in a in a in a way that is, like, clear that these are your results, and these are the things that you are going after. I I think that's one of the things that prevents some of these things from happening is just making assumptions off of what you said.
Alex Judd:Can I say something to that? Yeah. I think one of the things that I've learned, especially if you have a young team, is you should not assume that people show up understanding how a business works. Right? Like...
Alex Judd:And what I mean by that very simply is, like, you should not assume that people get, like, the relationship of revenue, expenses, profit, and how their role fits into that equation. Like, they just don't get that. And they might not even get that, oh, as the owner of your business, all of this money is technically yours. Right? They might not understand that.
Alex Judd:And you've got kind of two options. You can down the road become resentful that they don't get that stuff, or you can carry the heart of a teacher and teach them how a business runs. And in the process of giving them clarity on how a business runs, give them clarity on their role within the business and what makes their role justified in the business. And what I've actually found is, again, referring back to what we already talked about, is if you hire great people, they're, like, thrilled to get that, like, one zero one business lesson on how this all works. And when their eyes are open, they're actually able to contribute in all five of these arenas better.
Alex Judd:We just can't assume people get that. I mean, thoughts there or do you agree with that?
Kyle Guemmer:Totally. And we talk a lot about even business owners, and we did this a few weeks ago when we were in Newark. It's like, which way do you naturally bend as a business owner? Is it in in the business or in the leadership? You need both of those as a business owner to be effective.
Kyle Guemmer:Well, before you become a business owner, you become an employee. Before you become seasoned, are new. And a lot of the people that are starting in our organization don't even have language to say that, but they also probably bend either towards relationships or results. They're either an executor of the thing or they're really good with people, and they're not just gonna wake up tomorrow and know those things. So it's like you have to bring them along in each of those areas and understand them, especially if we, as business owners and leaders, are bent towards one of those sides as well.
Matt Aiken:Yeah. This is a really good follow on to to number two, which is ability. And and and the question you said, do they have the skill to execute? And when I think about that, I think about Alex, you and Olivia working through what are the skills that a coach would need in order to be an effective coach at Path for Growth. Maybe talk about how clarity plays into that second that second piece of ability.
Alex Judd:Yeah. Maybe maybe we should rephrase that to say Olivia worked on. I followed along in so many ways because she she very much led that effort. Yeah. A lot of times, people speak in generalizations about the role that needs to be done and what's required to do that role.
Alex Judd:And because they speak broadly and kind of vaguely, it's just like, we'll just do this job. You know, just do the office hours call. Just just, you know, create the budget. Right? Just run the event and run the logistics for the event.
Alex Judd:Right? If I tell Catherine and our team, make sure you own and run logistics for the full day event that we have coming up. Like, that is technically her job. Right? But that, like, that is so broad and so vague.
Alex Judd:And in my mind, when I think logistics, if you actually sit me down and ask me what all is involved in logistics, I could probably think of 65 bullet points to listen logistic. But if I just say run logistics, then I'm gonna show up to that event that day, and I'm gonna be so frustrated the whole day because she didn't guess my 65 bullet points. Right? And so it's I I got one of two choices, and I actually do think it is a choice. I can operate with kind of the vague, just run logistics.
Alex Judd:But if I'm going to do that, I don't get to show up and throw a conniption fit every time one of my 65 bullet points isn't hit. And and I do actually know really effective business owners that they do this well. They say, we're gonna do an event. You're gonna run logistics. You own that outcome, and and I believe you have the ability to do that, and we're gonna do the event.
Alex Judd:And the event happens, and one of their 65 or probably 20 of their 65 bullet points of preferences of what they would want is... Aren't hit. They don't get mad. The the thing that they do do is they do the event, and then they sit down with that team member that own logistics, and they just ask them bunch of questions about what would you do differently next time? You know, what what are the notes we need to take?
Alex Judd:What are some thoughts? And then maybe the person asked them, what are your thoughts? And that's the way they operate. And maybe four events down the road, it actually is a really, really excellent, maybe even better than the 65 bullet points would have ever been. So if you got that level of patience and also if you have that level of financial runway, do that.
Alex Judd:Right? But if you don't have that level of patience, then you should probably label your 65 points of things that you really care about for the... That event that all fall under the umbrella of logistics is what I would say.
Matt Aiken:Yeah. I like that. Anything you'd add?
Kyle Guemmer:Yeah. In regards to the ability one, if they if they don't have ability and what I put under here is motivated but overwhelmed, I think a couple frameworks that we talk about a lot in regards to without ability is when we're on office hours or in coaching calls, people will talk about employees and navigating, like, how to how to talk to or how to gain clarity or how to communicate with employees. And oftentimes, we just start with the framework of cash. Like, is this a is this a knowledge problem? Is it an attitude problem?
Kyle Guemmer:Is it a skills problem, or is it a habits problem? And oftentimes, those things, except for maybe attitude, are associated with ability. Oh, if it's just a knowledge problem, maybe you just need to get clear on what you want, so you go back to the first one. If it's a skills or a habits problem, it's like, well, what are the skills and the habits that they don't have? And now we've just created development.
Kyle Guemmer:So it's like all of these things could be there, and if ability isn't there, it doesn't mean they can't do the job. Maybe. But but you can identify it through cash, and then you go over to, GWC, get it one at capacity to do it, and that is where now, like, that's another kind of ability diagnostic and framework of like, do they get it? That's the clarity one. Do they want it?
Kyle Guemmer:That's kind of an attitude question. Do they have the capacity to do it? And that could be within them as a person or some of those skills and habits that they need to develop. But usually, if we're having that conversation, it's around we're lacking the confidence that they may have the ability to do the job.
Alex Judd:Yeah. I think if there's one thing that I look back to my first couple years of business that I would say, man, I would take that one back and I would do that one differently, is if I get really frustrated with an employee or something like that, that I obviously played a role in hiring, I would like to very rationally, very thoughtfully maybe have someone else ask me the question, like, do you think that they care? Like, do you think that they really care about the work that they're doing and and doing a good job? And I will tell you, in most situations the answer would be a raving yes. Yeah, of course they care.
Alex Judd:And that's really helpful to realize it's like they care. So when get worked up and flustered and frustrated, it's really easy to misdiagnose a skill problem as like, they just don't care. If they cared, they would be doing this. And it's like, when you rationally think about it, it's like, they clearly care. And and if someone cares, you you have found the hardest thing to find.
Alex Judd:Then you gotta ask yourself, okay, do I have the patience and do they have the willingness to develop new skills? Mhmm. And if the answer to that is yes, man, to the degree that you can afford it, stay in the fight, because great people are hard to come by. The fact that you have someone that's caring and willing and and up for going on a development journey, that's hard to find and it's expensive to find.
Matt Aiken:Yeah. That's great. And I think that that that piece of care really plays into this third attribute, which is responsibility. Mhmm. Right?
Matt Aiken:The the ability to respond. When someone is without responsibility, like, how do you find that out? And then what what do you coach people to do about that, Kyle?
Kyle Guemmer:Yeah. This is a situation where... How I've seen it play out in coaching is people are frustrated that their their employees... I act like my customers are frustrated all the time. My customers are not frustrated all the time, but we're navigating
Matt Aiken:through Kyle,
Alex Judd:I feel like some of your people are actually pretty happy.
Kyle Guemmer:Where we're navigating through, like, man, this is a good employee, but, like, man, they're not they're not really owning this thing. And then we start talking about it, and oftentimes we realize, like, maybe they do have clarity in the role. Maybe they even have the ability, but at times, that owner is robbing them of actually owning the outcome. And they're more just giving them tasks to execute the thing, but they're not letting them really own the outcome. So it's like kind of hard to have ownership of something when it's like, hey, I want you to do x, y, and z, which is actually producing a happy customer or value delivered, but I only want you to do those things.
Kyle Guemmer:But when a customer's not happy, why are you not taking ownership of that? It's like, well, you just asked me to do these things, and so it's really just like a... And what I put here is like it's talented but inconsistent because these people care. They do have the ability, but the results are inconsistent because you just told them to do the tasks, but they're not owning some of those outcomes that happen.
Alex Judd:Yeah. I think that's something that stands out to me is the way we're walking through this right now can actually feel very deflating for someone that isn't wired to be administratively gifted or managerial in nature. They're maybe more of a visionary, energetic, enthusiastic, relational leader. Right? Like, this can feel deflating because you you now feel like this is all on me, and unless I do this stuff, I suck as a leader.
Alex Judd:I'm not a great manager. I have found success with even telling people, Ben is an example of this, Olivia is an example of this, telling people, hey, I need you to own the responsibility of creating the system in which this will occur predictably. Like, I can't do that, and I suck at that. I I had a converse... Like, our...
Alex Judd:Just in some of the ways that we do payroll and incentives and things like that can be really creative in our company. And I... There's some of it that I literally... The details of it, I do not understand how it works. And I I told Ben, like, because we were bringing on a new salesperson.
Alex Judd:We were figuring out how we connect HubSpot into ADP and how Mona on our team has access to all this. I said... I told him, I said, trying to think about how all that is going to work does not feel like I'm blind. It feels like I'm trying to see out of the back of my head is what it feels like. And I said, it is...
Alex Judd:I need to not think about that at all. I need to just have the assurance that it's going to get done, and it's gonna get done well because people getting paid right is, like, the thing that I care about most. And I just said, can you do that for me? Can you own that? He said, yeah.
Alex Judd:I got it. And then, you know, him and Olivia always come back to me, they're like, you, like, made that sound like it was the the most difficult thing in the world. They're like... It's like one little integration and, like... But, I mean, that's different giftings.
Alex Judd:Right? And so you don't have to do all the work. It's just your job to clearly communicate what you're asking people to own and then get affirmation that they can do that.
Matt Aiken:Yeah. Communication is is definitely your first step, could be your first step as it relates to communicating. I expect for you to take responsibility.
Alex Judd:That's right.
Matt Aiken:Right? It's too often, we either don't communicate that or we just communicate, I expect you to own it. Well, what does own it mean? Like you said, being... Again, goes back to this skill, this kingpin skill of clarity.
Matt Aiken:Taking responsibility looks like, and then you lay out what taking responsibility looks like.
Alex Judd:And and, you know, a lot of times owners struggle, and I... Then this is speaking from my playbook. Like, I'll get really stressed out and frustrated because there's something that isn't part of the CEO role that I'm like, I just have to focus on right now because if I don't do it, then no one else is going to do it. And then one of the great, like, check marks is like, okay. Well, who are you paying to do that?
Alex Judd:And it's like, I'm I'm actually not paying anyone to do that. It is... It does not fall under anyone's role. And so then I get to decide as an owner, okay. Do I wanna pay someone to do that?
Alex Judd:Because that's always an option. Right? There there are people that will line up to do any job in our company. Right? And there's good people.
Alex Judd:Or do I wanna continue doing this? What I don't get to do is get frustrated that people aren't doing things that we're not paying them for and we have never asked them to do.
Kyle Guemmer:Mhmm. Yeah. There's there's two pieces of what you talked about that I think are are really important and really practical for business owners listening to this is you did give an outcome. Where I often see this happening is really in two ways. Number one, you give a bunch of tasks, understand that...
Kyle Guemmer:Or underneath that, not understanding that, like, we're figuring out how to effectively and caringly and profitably pay a salesman. Like, that's the responsibility. No. I want you to go into HubSpot and figure out the integration. I want you to go into our payroll and figure this thing out.
Kyle Guemmer:I want you to go into this. They do all those things, and you're like, I still don't know how to pay this person. And it's like, no. You you didn't actually give the responsibility. You gave the tasks.
Kyle Guemmer:You didn't, but that is what happens
Alex Judd:in times. People do.
Kyle Guemmer:Yeah. And then the other part is business owners feel like they're the only ones that can shoulder that responsibility. I don't wanna give Ben the responsibility to figure out how to pay someone. That's not his responsibility. That should be my responsibility.
Kyle Guemmer:I I run this business. That would be too stressful for him. Instead of just saying like, hey, man. Like, I want you to figure out how to care for this person, motivate them in the right ways, and still be profitable and healthy as a business. And what did he do?
Kyle Guemmer:It's like, I would love to figure that out.
Alex Judd:That's right.
Kyle Guemmer:And and so often, we don't give people the opportunity to take that responsibility because we feel like we have to shoulder all of that. When you just give that outcome and it's so amazing, we get to just see people like, these people really care. And we just are... We're hampering that when we don't give them that responsibility.
Alex Judd:Yeah. I think that's so good.
Matt Aiken:Okay. So fourth ingredient that we're responsible for as leaders is authority. Do they have the power to act? Man, we've seen this, I think, over and over again with our... With with some of the situations we deal with.
Matt Aiken:What sticks out about without authority to you?
Kyle Guemmer:Yeah. I I think you and I have had a few conversations about this over the last over the last few few days. When when we as business owners and leaders start to delegate things and delegate responsibility, like, now we're we're past responsibility, As soon as something comes up, we we are we are holding that person accountable, but as soon as something goes a little bit sideways, we we step in, and now we're the one that that is removing the power from that leader to actually respond in that situation. So it's like, hey. I want you to hold accountable your team, and now you're accountable for the performance of the team.
Kyle Guemmer:But then as soon as that person wants to fire an underperformer, it's like, oh, no. No. No. No. No.
Kyle Guemmer:We can't do that. So it's like you're holding me responsible for the results of my team. You're holding me responsible for LMA of my team, but when I wanna act in alignment with that responsibility you've given, now you're robbing me of that respond... Of that of that authority.
Matt Aiken:What... What's the cost of taking authority away from people that you've delegated things to?
Alex Judd:The first thing that comes to mind for me is you take authority away from them, and now you have it all on yourself, and you're like, why am I doing all of this? Why do I have to do all of this? One is hard, man. I'm... You know, I learn about this a lot every time we get closer to an experience just because we are still...
Alex Judd:I think we're much better now, but we've had a couple a couple different people lead and manage our live events. Right? And one of the things that I'm really hoping and praying for is a level of retention with regard to the person that manages and leads our live events because you could... You can start to get a level of alignment and shared understanding via experience that it might not all be on paper, but you're like, they just get it. They get what I'm looking for.
Alex Judd:And that, you know, in some ways, Michelle, she left our team on such unbelievably good terms. Right? But that was something that her and I had is we'd worked together for ten years and She got it. There were things she just got. Right?
Alex Judd:And and and that's one of the benefits. Olivia is the same way. Her and I have worked together for over ten years. Right? And there's just things that they just get.
Alex Judd:Right? Whenever you're working with someone that doesn't have that, then the thing that that you are responsible to as a leader is to give them a clear image. Like, you can't just expect for them to read your mind, which is what a lot of us do, to give them a clear image of what you want them to create or build or or work on and things like that. What's really challenging is when you don't fully do that, and then you see things that deviate from that image, and you, like, catch them before they're before they're fully executed. Then you have this, like, leadership decision to make that I think honestly comes down to wisdom and nuance of, like, do I jump in and say, hey, we actually don't need to be spending money on that thing, or I actually I actually don't think our people would really value that to that degree or something like that.
Alex Judd:And it's no fault of their own that they chose that thing. They just didn't know. Right? Do you do that? Or do you let them run with it?
Alex Judd:And then maybe we get some feedback forms that suggest like that was my least favorite part of the whole thing. You know? And then you also have to leave the variable in there that you might get feedback forms back that say that was the freaking best thing you've ever done. You're like, wow. Thank God I didn't step in.
Alex Judd:All three of those have happened before. And it's just... There's no perfect. There is no black and white here. It's like this gray that you just have to use wisdom.
Alex Judd:And I think it's why I value mentors and coaches in my life is because they they are the speed bump of saying, like, are you sure you wanna step in there? And what... And they ask the question that you just asked. What's the cost of stepping in here, and are you willing to live with that cost?
Matt Aiken:Yeah. I actually think this is something you have done really, really well is Please don't survey everyone
Alex Judd:on our team right now. I always can grow is what I would say. Yeah. The,
Matt Aiken:I can think of several examples where I was I was sitting in in a position where I needed to make a decision. We say on the team, if if you have an idea, that's great. You can bring it up. You just might be the one responsible for implementing that idea. Right?
Matt Aiken:Yeah. I I was I was pitching a a team training, and I was like, okay. I I I think I know. I I I think I know what I wanna pitch. I I know I can make a really good case why it it matters to this company.
Matt Aiken:And I I kinda wanna... I wanna price it at at this price point. And I was sitting there and I was like, okay. I think I need to go ask for permission. And and then I and I stopped and I said, wait a second.
Matt Aiken:If I just do this, which I I don't think I was gonna be able to get ahold of you for a little while. I think you were you were out
Alex Judd:of office. Typical. And I
Matt Aiken:was trying I was trying to get it... Try trying to get, you know, jump jump on it, strike while the iron's hot. And I said, hey, what's the result of me acting with authority here? Well, I'm gonna have to live with the consequences. And I'm okay with living with the consequences because I've made mistakes before that I've gotten coached through, and then I've also swung and and hit and had been like, okay, great.
Matt Aiken:Well done. And so I I I sent it without permission, but within the construct of the standard that you had set, and it went really well. And I I would not have done that if you hadn't trained me that authority was something that I had and that mistakes were things that we could work through. Mhmm. Yeah.
Matt Aiken:And so, you know, I... That was a low risk mistake. Worst thing that happens is I undersell it. Right? Or or I I over I overprice it and we miss out.
Matt Aiken:Right?
Kyle Guemmer:Low risk.
Alex Judd:That's right. And I think the out of office thing is actually a very... Know, we make jokes about it, but I think it's actually an important point. So so we've done work recently because we've we've kind of got, like, a a kind of one off contract with the owner team that is the nonprofit that Brian and Shannon Miles lead and run. And and really, they don't run it at all.
Alex Judd:They they own the nonprofit, and they've empowered an executive director and a team of people. Brian and Shannon are prolific entrepreneurs. They're wildly sharp business people, and it's been so interesting to work with their team. We work much... I know Brian and Shannon well and talk to them every once in a while, but we work exclusively with their team.
Alex Judd:We do not work with them with regard to the contract of what we're producing and performing for them related to their events and virtual events and things like that. And it's been so inspiring to me to work with their team because Brian and Shannon, they love to travel internationally, and they're out of pocket a lot, like a lot a lot. And we'll be on meetings, and the executive director, Clarissa, will just say, she'll be like, well, this is a decision we need to make. I don't have another meeting with them for another three weeks, and so I'm just... We should just do this.
Alex Judd:And they they have told her, we want you to do that. And they are willing to come back in three weeks and even be like, okay. Where'd we land? But, you know, but they they do not want their international travel schedule to be the bottleneck on the nonprofit or the business that they built growing. Right?
Alex Judd:And, you know, they're they're more than willing to live with that because they see the results that produces. Right? And and and they hired someone that's really effective at making good decisions, and they've onboarded her really well too. And so that has inspired my vision of what's possible. And sometimes leaving is actually easier.
Alex Judd:Like, leaving and being offline for a while is easier than having visibility into all the Slack channels and email threads and discussions. It's sometimes easier to just be like, I'm just gonna let them do it and I'm not gonna see any of it and I'm gonna come back and see what happened.
Matt Aiken:Yeah. And and so then through that lens of I've learned through mistakes, we've learned through mistakes, we've evaluated experience, what ingredient inevitably does that lead us to? That's accountability. So let's let's close out with this this fifth ingredient, accountability. Kyle, why is accountability the the the final ingredient towards great employees?
Kyle Guemmer:Well, yeah. I mean, that that assumes that the first four are there, so they know what success looks like. They have the skills to execute it. They're owning the outcomes, and they have the power to act. If they never know how they're doing, one, man, we're just missing a lot of opportunities to, like, celebrate good work and and effective work and efficient work and mission driven work with our employees when they are killing it in their role.
Kyle Guemmer:And so it's it's massive missed opportunities there. But then on the other end, if they have all of that and and they're not doing it effectively, then then results are gonna suffer, which is the lower standard. They're gonna drift. That's probably them not being celebrate... Celebrated.
Kyle Guemmer:And then there's just cultural decay because now we're maybe not serving our customers like we could. The owner's frustrated, but I'm not getting feedback from them. I'm also not getting celebrated from them. And there's just all of these things that start to break down.
Matt Aiken:Mhmm. Yeah. Anything you did?
Alex Judd:No. I think we covered it. I think we nailed it.
Matt Aiken:Yeah. So if you... If you're a leader, you're responsible for these five ingredients, clarity, ability, responsibility, authority, and accountability. Good stuff. Thanks, man.
Alex Judd:Well, there you have it. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode. If you want any of the information or resources that we mentioned, that's all in the show notes. Hey. Before you go, could I ask you for one quick favor?
Alex Judd:Could you subscribe, rate, and review this podcast episode? Your feedback is what helps our team engage in a sequence of never ending improvement. We wanna amplify what's valuable to you and obviously reduce or even remove the things that aren't. Also, you leaving a positive review is what helps us connect with, build trust with, and serve other leaders around the country. So thanks in advance for helping us out on that front.
Alex Judd:Are you a leader that wants to grow your business in a healthy way, serve people exceptionally well, and glorify God in the process? Go to pathforgrowth.com to get more information about our community of impact driven leaders and schedule a call with our team. Hey. Thank you so much to the Path for Growth team, Kyle Cummings and the crew at Pod circle, and the remarkable leaders that are actively engaged in the Path for Growth community. Y'all are the people that make this podcast possible.
Alex Judd:Y'all know this. We're rooting for you. We're praying for you. We wanna see you win. Remember, my strength is not for me.
Alex Judd:Your strength is not for you. Our strength is for service. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
