8

ALIGN THE BEHAVIORS

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Principle 6: The Instant You Lower Your Standards Is the Instant Performance Erodes

Certain companies tend to outperform their competition year after year. They sell similar products or services and are in similar locations, but for some reason or another, they keep crushing the competition.

Chick-fil-A is one of these companies that blows their competition out of the water. While their food is great, what really differentiates them isn’t the food—it’s how they make customers feel. The Chick-fil-A leadership pipeline comes alive every day through the actions and behaviors of employees who serve customers. What’s amazing is the people who work in Chick-fil-A restaurants don’t earn much more than industry standards.

Chick-fil-A leaders set high standards and work tirelessly to improve the performance of their people so every customer has a great experience. The most famous of all Chick-fil-A standards is how employees respond to customers after a simple “thank you.” Every employee from the CEO to the person behind the register responds with, “It’s my pleasure.”

It started with their founder, Truett Cathy, and now flows through his son Dan and the entire staff across the country. As the story goes, Cathy was staying in a high-end hotel while on a business trip. Throughout the stay, the staff would respond to him with, “It’s my pleasure to serve you.” Cathy fell in love with the way this made him feel as a customer of the hotel. He wanted to create a similar experience within Chick-fil-A. When he got back to work on Monday he told the executive management team about his experience at the hotel and opened up the dialogue about a setting a similar standard in their restaurants. Instead of mandating the standard on day one, Cathy took a different approach. For over two years anytime someone would say thank you to him for any reason he would respond with, “It’s my pleasure.” People in the organization caught on and began to mimic his behavior. Before long, his example became everyone else’s habit. Many years later, you can now walk in any Chick-fil-A and you would be shocked not to hear, “It’s my pleasure.” The standard was set by Truett, and it’s carried out in the behaviors of every employee each day. It’s wonderful to experience.

Cathy not only had a unique way of coming up with the standards at Chick-fil-A but also was creative in how he communicated them to get the correct behaviors of the employees. Another one of the defined standards at Chick-fil-A is that staff members are supposed to be friendly to customers and smile at them when they get to the front of the line to order.

Back in 1974, Cathy and the team were opening a new restaurant in Paramus, New Jersey. To mark the big occasion and to ensure it was successful, Cathy traveled to help open the store on its first day. Instead of just being a figurehead, Cathy handed out samples to potential customers who were unfamiliar with the now-famous chicken sandwiches.

On this particular launch day, Cathy noticed one of the team members working the register was not smiling at customers as they came up to place their order. He called over the store manager, “Jimmy, every time I look over I notice Jenny isn’t smiling at customers when they place their order.” Jimmy went right into “fix it” mode, and during a small break in traffic he pulled Jenny aside and told her to make sure she smiled when new customers came to place their order. But Jimmy’s words didn’t work. Cathy kept noticing Jenny wasn’t smiling, so the next time he went back to refill his sample tray, he walked past Jenny and said, “How come every time I walk by, you are smiling?” The young employee looked at him and cracked a small smile. Cathy didn’t stop there. Every time he got more samples, he would mention to Jenny, “Look at you always smiling.” In a matter of 20 minutes, the two had a real connection. When he would look over at her, she would smile and almost laugh. Before long that smile on her face became permanent instead of just momentary.

It doesn’t matter who it was or what had happened before: smiling at customers was and remains a standard at Chick-fil-A. Instead of lowering the standard because Jenny was unwilling to meet it or worse, firing her during her first day on the job, Cathy got creative and helped her meet the standard in a fun and unique way.

This is proof standards do not have to be complicated and no standard, regardless of how simple, should be assumed; it must be communicated. There is no denying how aligned Chick-fil-A’s people are at creating a unique and differentiated experience for customers. At the core of this is their leaders and the standards they set for the team. Here is the best part: Chick-fil-A doesn’t have a patent on it. You can and should leverage standards to align the behaviors of your team. When you do, I promise you will be on your way to getting the results you want out of others.

Route to Results

To understand exactly how leaders who build the best get consistently high results from their team, we studied and interviewed the leaders who scored the highest on LearnLoft’s BTB Leader Assessment. A consistent pattern began to emerge.

The pattern was solidified even further for me when I was having dinner at a local restaurant. I said thank you to my waitress as she refilled my drink. “It’s my pleasure!” she shot back. Never missing an opportunity to explore my curiosity, I responded, “Have you ever worked at Chick-fil-A?” “Yes, sir, I worked there for four years back when I was in high school. I haven’t worked there in 10 years, but I never dropped the habit.”

I knew, then, the pattern for consistently high results. High standards produce behaviors from people. Those behaviors, when practiced repeatedly, become a habit, and those habits lead to results (Figure 8.1). This pattern is what I’ve come to call the Route to Results.

FIGURE 8.1   The Route to Results

To continue the example of Chick-fil-A and to make the Route to Results come to life, the “It’s my pleasure” standard for a new employee would look something like this. The standard is set on the first day: when a customer says “thank you,” you reply with “My pleasure.” Each time a customer does this, the new employee has to consciously decide to respond with “My pleasure.” With some reminding by colleagues, along with positive reinforcement from the store operator when the new employee gets it right, it begins to feel like a comfortable response. After repeating the known behavior hundreds of times a day it will become a habit, and the employee will respond with “My pleasure” without even thinking. The habit creates a memorable experience for Chick-fil-A’s customers, and as a result, they continue to visit Chick-fil-A, thus creating the desired business result.

Instead of focusing on results first, you must have the patience to follow the Route to Results. Start at the beginning by setting great standards, and the rest will follow.

The Route to Results, once understood and applied, will help you to align the behaviors of your team.

Breaking It Down

By definition, standards simply define what good looks like. The way I want you to think about them is slightly different. The leaders who build the best don’t define what good looks like, they define what great looks like. When you define what great looks like for your team and communicate it correctly, these standards will produce behaviors and habits that are vital for achieving results.

First, a behavior is defined as the way in which one consciously acts or conducts oneself. The key word here is consciously. Each person walking the earth makes many decisions every day—the majority of them consciously. These can be impacted based on how we think or feel in a given moment.

Conversely, a habit is something done without thinking or subconsciously. Amber Selking, a performance coach, defined a habit so simply on the Follow My Lead podcast: “Something you do so often it becomes the very essence of your being.”

A great example of a habit you can probably relate to is leaving your cell phone plugged in next to your bed. When you wake up, you reach for the phone and begin checking it without a second thought. It’s something you do without thinking. It’s a habit.

Traditionally habits are formed over time. Most people who agree with this believe it takes between 30 and 60 days for a behavior to becomes a habit. Turns out time isn’t the only factor or even the most important factor. How often you repeat a behavior is what turns it into a habit. If a family moves from one house to another and the house they moved from had a traditional fence but the new house has an electric fence, would it take their dog 30 to 60 days to make staying inside the electric fence a habit? No, the behavior of going outside and not going beyond the electric fence would take just a couple of days (assuming the dog goes out four or five times a day). The same is true for people. While the more complicated behaviors might take more repetition than a simple behavior to become a habit, there is no doubt the habits in our lives lead to results.

Setting Standards

Have you ever driven over the speed limit? I suspect you answered yes because we all have. But have you ever willingly sped past a police officer? I’m guessing your answer is no. Why is this? Each state sets speed limits on roads to “define what good looks like.” These are meant to keep not only you safe but others on the road as well. It is the duty of a police officer to enforce the standard by giving out tickets to those who do not adhere to it. The threat of punishment aligns the behaviors of drivers from all background with all different types of cars.

Now imagine for a minute your state decided to remove speed limit signs altogether. Drivers could drive as fast as they wanted on any given road. Would you still drive 25 mph in a school zone, or would you go 35 mph and just keep an eye out for children? My guess is you would pick the latter. The principle here is this:

The instant you lower the standard is the instant performance begins to erode.

A great example of this that’s easy to relate to is one that rental car companies made famous. If you have ever rented a car you know the standard is to return the car with a full tank of gas. If you decide not to meet the standard, they charge an astronomical amount to refill the tank. Sometimes it costs four times more than if you were to fill it up yourself. This standard and known consequence produces consistent behaviors from many different kinds of people. If the rental car companies were to lower the standard to return the car with the tank half-full versus completely full, renters would fill it up halfway instead of all the way.

Turns out all standards aren’t the same. They come in three forms: policies, procedures, and merits.

   Policy standards typically come in the form of an organizational policy that rarely changes over time. These encompass safety rules or sexual harassment regulations that are rarely controlled by team leaders—these are hard lines. A great example would be this: on a construction site everyone, regardless of their role, must wear a hard hat. It is a standard that must be met. Policy standards may also be created and regulated by a power outside of your organization such as an association or board.

   Procedure standards are process-oriented things that could change over time. Think of it as a documented best practice, which can be followed exactly or modified slightly depending on the situation. A few examples are a complex business-to-business sales process, scripts for a Customer Service department, or how a team meeting is run. If you think back to Chick-fil-A, saying “My pleasure” after a customer says “thank you” is simply a procedure standard.

   Merit standards often are the most customized per leader. These tend to be value-oriented based on what the leader believes to be right or wrong—things like the golden rule, avoiding negativity, not allowing gossip, or going the extra mile for your clients.

Of the three forms of standards, you have the most control over procedure and merit standards. Focusing on these two will help align the behaviors and elevate the performance of the team. It’s important to remember there is a fine line that you toe when setting standards. They are not meant to create power or elevate you above anyone else.

Creating Standards

In Building the Best workshops, I use a specific structure for the creation of standards. It goes as follows: Write down two standards that fall into the categories of policy, procedure, and merit. Keep it to a sentence or less to ensure a clear standard. Here are some examples:

Policy

   “Dress code: Dress appropriately for the day.”

   “Misconduct: Legal or moral misconduct will never be tolerated.”

Procedure

   “Inbound leads: Followed up on within the first business day.”

   “Tactical weekly team meetings: Communicate what you’ve done, what you’re working on, and where you need help.”

Merit

   “Choices: Do what’s right, always.”

   “Positive attitude: You control your feelings about someone or something.”

These are all short and powerful examples of standards that help produce behavior that is aligned across the team. In an effort to help you further, I want to go deeper into a procedure standard most employees hate: team meetings.

Mike Shildt took over as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals during the midpoint of the 2018 season. The team was playing well below expectations. Knowing the difficulty of his new job, Shildt introduced a new daily meeting that he called “ball talk.” The purpose of “ball talk” was to huddle up as a team before games and brainstorm the following three things:

1.   What went well the previous day’s game?

2.   What was needed to improve?

3.   What can the team do to be successful in the game today?

The “ball talk” meetings usually last 10 minutes, but they have been known to go from 2 minutes all the way to an hour. Even though Shildt is in the room and prepared with notes from the previous day’s game, it’s the players who drive the discussion. One of his all-star players, Matt Carpenter, described it this way in an interview with ESPN: “It’s like group therapy and really productive. It’s something of value. I don’t like just sitting in meetings, but we are getting things accomplished and getting better, I am all for it.”

After the implementation of “ball talk” the Cardinals got much better. They ended with one of the best records in the league after Shildt took over as the manager, going 41–28 and narrowly missing the playoffs by a mere three games. Carpenter believed Shildt and “ball talk” were at the center of their transformation. “Mike has a way of bringing everyone together into the conversation. He shows he cares about people by writing hand-written notes, texts, and phone calls. He doesn’t get emotional, panicked, he understands how hard the game is and doesn’t live and die by the results. He took over a tough situation and really unified the clubhouse. He got guys to buy into what he wants.”

There are many lessons to learn from a leader like Mike Shildt, but his implementation of the “ball talk” standard is a great one. This struck a personal chord with me because the first year leading my own team I really struggled to run productive meetings. For example, every Monday morning the entire team met and reviewed what we had going on that particular week. I spent the vast majority of the meeting talking. Each week the meeting would pass, and each week a little more energy was drained from the team. It was the hiring of Corey, our first remote team member, that caused a radical shift in our weekly meeting and the creation of a new standard. At the end of one particular meeting, Corey called afterward and said, “John, I appreciate you getting the entire team together every week, but I have noticed as an outsider that people aren’t all that engaged, and you spend the majority of the meeting talking. In my previous role, we had a team meeting structure that people loved, not because it was shorter, but because it helped us all do our job better. Would you be open to me sharing it with you?”

Without hesitation, I said, “Please do.” He went on, “Each meeting every member of the team comes prepared to discuss three things: what I did last week, what I am doing this week, and where I need help. We would go around the room quickly and everyone on the team was prepared, and most importantly my boss was able to help each one of us perform better each week by aligning with where we needed help.” Instantly the lightbulb went off for me.

The next week, I introduced the new meeting structure to the team, and in less than three meetings we were in a groove. The meeting time went from two hours down to one, and people came prepared each week to play a major part in the meeting instead of sitting on the sidelines as bystanders. Over time, I have adapted the weekly tactical team meeting to follow this structure:

   Step 1: Small talk

   Step 2: Update progress toward team goal and meaningful wins from the prior week

   Step 3: Review team priorities on whiteboard

   Step 4: Each team member reviews their “done, working on, need help”

   Step 5: Motivational topic or vulnerability moment from John to team

   Step 6: Exit and execute

Like anything, the more familiar you become with something, the more ingrained it becomes in your behavior. Try using the meeting structure with your team as a standard and you will see a difference in behavior in just a few weeks.

If you already have a tactical meeting structure you like and you want to create other procedural standards, there are three questions you can ask yourself:

1.   What’s the desired end result you want from your team? (Outcome)

2.   What’s stopping the team from getting there? (Problem)

3.   What can be done instead? (Standard)

The LearnLoft tactical weekly meeting standard is depicted in Table 8.1 using the three questions.

TABLE 8.1   Weekly Meeting Standard

Ideally, you will have as few standards as possible to get the desired behavior from your team. If you have to define every minute detail, then there is a good chance you have the wrong people on the team.

Communicating Standards

Setting standards is great, but if you don’t clearly communicate them to your team you might as well not have come up with them in the first place. The late Pat Summitt definitely didn’t make this mistake. The Hall of Fame Women’s basketball coach had enormous success on the court over her 38-year coaching career at the University of Tennessee. Not only did she retire with 1,098 career wins and eight National Championships, but 25 of her former players and assistant coaches have gone on to major roles in coaching and basketball management. This success didn’t happen by accident. It came in large part because Summitt was a master at communicating the standards of her program.

She had 12 standards for her teams at Tennessee, and she communicated them all the time. They were written in their locker room and made available for the team to see and read almost everywhere they went. Here are the 12:

1.   Respect Yourself and Others

2.   Take Full Responsibility

3.   Develop and Demonstrate Loyalty

4.   Learn to Be a Great Communicator

5.   Discipline Yourself so No One Else Has To

6.   Make Hard Work Your Passion

7.   Don’t Just Work Hard, Work Smart

8.   Put the Team Before Yourself

9.   Make Winning an Attitude

10.   Be a Competitor

11.   Change Is a Must

12.   Handle Success Like You Handle Failure

She communicated these 12 standards in one-on-one meetings when they weren’t being met as well as in front of the entire team to ensure they weren’t forgotten. Ideally, you will communicate your own standards when taking on a new position or as new professionals join the team. While that is the ideal time, it’s more likely you need to communicate your standards to a team you already lead in an effort to reestablish clarity and focus.

The old-school way of leadership would have this as a clear-cut exercise where you gather the entire team, announce the new standards, and send people on their way. The new model of communicating standards is much different. It is centered on knowing “why” the standards exist in the first place. The old saying, “Because I said so” isn’t good enough in today’s environment. For each standard you set for your team, it’s critical you are able to articulate why it exists by tying it to one of two thoughts our brains are always evaluating: “gain” or “pain.”

While there isn’t a perfect answer to which one works better, the more effective you are at clearly articulating the “gain” or “pain,” the better the adoption of standards will be. As an example, the Allstate insurance company uses both in TV commercials to drive the same outcome. In some commercials they highlight the Safe Driving Bonus Check if you are a client of theirs and you avoid accidents over the course of two years. The “gain” is that by aligning your behaviors to safe driving you will get a check from Allstate for your great behavior. Just a few minutes later, on a different channel, you might see a different commercial from the same company featuring “Allstate Mayhem”: a fictional character who torments people or distracts them in order to create havoc so major accidents happen. This commercial creates a sense of fear or “pain” in the mind of the prospective customer.

Whether you have seen the Allstate commercials or not, the simplest way to think about “gain” is by answering the following question around each standard you have established.

What good thing happens to each person individually or the team as a whole if they live out the standard?

The simplest way to determine the “pain” is by asking yourself a slightly different question.

What bad thing happens to them or the team if they fail to live out the standard?

While this seems simple, you would be amazed at how many leaders fail to think about why the standard exists. Regardless whether you lean toward connecting why a standard exists to “gain” or “pain,” the key is knowing the answer and being prepared to share it.

Putting It Together

Once you’re ready to have the conversation with your team, either one-on-one or in a group setting, there is a simple four-step conversation framework you can use to improve the likelihood you are successful. It goes like this:

   Step 1: I realize I have failed you from a leadership perspective (Vulnerability)

   Step 2: Here’s how I propose we solve it (Standard)

   Step 3: If you live out this standard, here is what will happen (Pain avoidance or Gain)

   Step 4: Do I have your commitment moving forward? (Buy-in)

This four-step approach adds two very important elements to the standards you have set and the pains or gains you have previously identified. First, it begins by creating a moment of vulnerability in front of your team. Too often leaders forget this very important piece and start the conversation with everything their team is doing wrong. When this happens the conversation almost automatically puts other people in a defensive position. Instead, by using a vulnerability statement like, “I realize I have failed you from a leadership perspective,” you create a safe space by putting the blame solely on yourself. Secondly, you ask for their commitment to gain their buy-in to the standard moving forward. Instead of pushing or forcing some new standard on them, you are asking for their verbal commitment, which drastically improves the odds it will be lived out in their behavior.

Here is how it would sound if a new standard for your team was “Greet every customer with a smile.”

“I have been doing some self-reflection about how I am leading, and I realized there was an area I failed you from a leadership perspective around the proper way to greet customers when they come into the store. To remedy the situation, I propose that anytime a customer comes in the store they are met with a smile from whoever is behind the counter, myself included. If we live out smiling at every customer, it’s scientifically proven to enhance their shopping experience and will play a major factor in whether they come back soon. Since we have an aggressive growth goal this year and we all have a bonus if we hit it, it’s imperative to create a unique customer experience, and it starts with a smile. Do I have your commitment moving forward that anytime customers come in they will be met with a smile, regardless of how you feel that particular moment?”

Getting Standard-Worthy Behaviors Consistently

Leaders who Build the Best brilliantly focus their team standards on setting the bar high. They constantly reward, recognize, and talk about these standards on an ongoing basis to ensure they get the right behaviors day in and day out.

In the next chapter I am going to cover holding team members accountable to standards; I’ll say now that there is a simple and easy way to ensure people are living up to the standards set for your team.

Growing up, my family loved board games. It didn’t matter the game, we played it with an intensity unmatched by any other family. We particularly loved Taboo, which Milton Bradley called, “the game of unspeakable fun.”

Taboo is simple. The objective of the game is for players to have their team guess the word on the player’s card without using the word itself or five additional “taboo” or forbidden words listed on the card. If the team member who is calling out the clues says one of the “taboo” words, a member of the other team smashes a red buzzer to make everyone aware of the infraction, which carries a one-point penalty. It is a fantastic game to play with friends and family. But I share this story about the game not because I love it but because of the act of hitting the red buzzer.

In the red buzzer lies a simple and mentally effective way to allow everyone on the team to call out others for behaviors that aren’t standard-worthy and aligned to the group. I have seen some leaders keep the red buzzer from the Taboo game in a common place to remind everyone on the team of the standard, while others have a buzzer at everyone’s workstation. The point isn’t so much the physical act of buzzing someone. It is more to create a mental image and communicate the idea that behaviors that aren’t in alignment with the standards do not go unnoticed.

The power of leveraging standards as a leader can transcend your time leading your current team. The people you lead will, without question, adopt many of the standards you set and carry them forward to lead in their future roles or even in their families. Team members come to respect the standards and uphold them on your behalf. But standards without accountability are just words, as we will see in the next chapter.