The ABCs of True Leadership with Stefan Feuerstein

Hey, real quick before we get into the conversation. Look, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while now, you know I don't have sponsors. And it's mainly because I know most people, including myself, skip right through them and I just don't want to annoy my audience with 10 minutes of sponsor spots every single week. However, it also means I don't get paid to do this. So the way I help fund my ability to provide free content and really interesting conversations like the one you're about to hear is through my sales training and coaching services. So if you've gotten value out of some of these conversations on this podcast and you're looking to level up your sales game, do me a favor and go to jbarrows.com and check out the training tab on the top nav bar.

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Now let's get on with the show. I will teach you the three categories A, B and C. A is do what you want, B is do what you want but inform me and C is ask me first. And don't worry, I'll be teaching you those as we go along and in exchange, I'll make three commitments with you. Number one, I will follow up with you in a way that actually helps. Number two, I will resolve any destructive conflict that comes up. And number three, I will commit to use every piece of work that we do together to help grow you as a professional. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between. We guess what I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us.

Now today's conversation, talk about making a positive impact on the world around us. I'm talking to Stefan Feuerstein and he is the author of ABC Delegation and An Insane Humanitarian. I mean, I thought this was, I took this podcast because I was very interested in delegation. That's one of my bigger challenges. I've kind of been plagued my entire career with, I'll just do it myself because, you know, if somebody else does it, it's not like I want, you know, I'm going to have to reverse engineer, it'll take me twice as long. And, you know, teach a man to fish, right? I've been doing that my entire career, but from a business standpoint, I'm not great at it. So I've been searching for ways to be better at delegation.

And his approach, ABC, really caught my attention. But then when I was preparing for this, I was floored with his background. I mean, he's one of the most impressive humanitarian backgrounds and work that I've seen a long time. And we started in Honduras and helping children in Honduras, which is like the murder capital of the world, managing 250 people and just basically got thrown into it. And this is where he really developed that ABC methodology, which is about autonomy, briefing and consent. And he has different buckets for different things. It's beautiful in its simplicity. And even after that, he helped out migrant children at the border. And he's just been doing incredible work all around the world.

And this leadership approach has really taken off. He goes and speaks at this at conferences and to Fortune 500 companies and really has seen some pretty drastic results using this approach. So we dove into his background, his history, his, you know, some of the challenges he faced with some of the examples of leadership that in these different environments and obviously unpacked the actual framework itself. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did, because I really did. Let's make it happen. Fong Feuerstein, welcome to Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? Doing very well. Thank you. Thanks for having me today. How's sunny Barcelona treating you right now?

Oh, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. I mean, it's, you know, it's getting colder, but it's not the kind of cold that you're used to. No, not even close. I was actually reminded of how incredible Barcelona is this past summer when I got to go down there again and just being on the, you know, on the boardwalk on the beach and seeing everybody at 10, 11 o'clock at night, you know, on a Tuesday at, you know, everybody's out running, jogging, healthy, eating, dining. And I'm like, ah, this is such a better life. Got me to be very jealous. Yeah, no, life happens in the streets here. Life happens on the terraces and hanging out. It's a good way of living. It's a good way of living. Yeah. A good friend of mine, Sam Jacobs, who runs the Pavilion Group, which is a great group of kind of practitioners like CROs and execution CLOs and stuff like that.

He actually just moved to Barcelona and started a family. So he came out. I just saw him the other day in Boston. He said it back. He's like, yeah, I'm looking forward to getting back. Yeah, no, I'd say it's a good place to be. I mean, there's a lot of people play paddle here, which is kind of like tennis, like small tennis court with glass walls mounted. You can bounce the ball off the walls and everything. So I've been getting into that. And then other than that, it's just kind of, you know, people spend a lot of time outside and kind of community. And it's just a good way of living. People connect with each other differently. Exactly. And let's talk about that because you had a very kind of interesting background, a lot of humanitarian work, a lot of, you know, just doing really good around the world.

And you have this framework that helps with delegation of resources for leadership, too. So we're going to get into all that. But as I always do on all these podcasts, we'd love to just kind of get a little bit of a better understanding of your origin story. So the stuff we can't read on LinkedIn, you know, where you grew up, parents, what influenced you. And specifically for you, you know, where did you get that humanitarian bug to say? Because for a lot of people, I talk about like the sales bug or the entrepreneurship bug or whatever that is. But you obviously early on connected in a way to a lot of this kind of bigger picture stuff and trying to help in different ways. So I'd love to learn where that came from early in your career.

So if you're in your life, not in your career. So could you give us a little bit of context there? Yeah, sure. So I believe that part of it was in me always, but I didn't always know it. My mother, she was a Ukrainian refugee who was born in Germany after the Second World War and then came across the U.S. on a boat to Ellis Island. But then when she arrived in the U.S., her mother got sick from just tonsillitis. And when I'm taking her tonsils out, something went wrong and she died. So my mother actually grew up in a children's home in New Jersey, in Fort Lee, New Jersey. And then my father, he's German and he was born in East Germany. And so at the end of the war, when the communists took over the eastern part of Germany, they lost everything.

And he moved up to the north coast of Germany and grew up very, very poor on a farm there. So I think that that understanding suffering and understanding resilience and understanding needing to overcome the challenges of life, it was always there. But I wasn't aware that I was interested in it until later. Like my plan was finance. I studied economics. I was planning to go into investment banking. And then after my undergrad, I went to Honduras as a volunteer for a year. And I had a job during the day working for the directors, his assistant. And then in the evening, I'd work with a group of kids, boys between 11 and 13. And they just completely changed my plans for life. Like they just to see these kids who had been through such terrible loss and terrible trauma and horrible things who still had that human spark and still cared about each other and loved each other and played with each other.

Like just that desire to do something with their lives as well, it just changed how I saw life completely. Why was it just kind of like, oh, Honduras, like, cool, that was on the list. And so I'll go do some volunteer work. Or was it purposeful of Honduras because there was something about that culture, that region that you appreciated? No, I was just, I mean, this was back in, when was it, 2002? So it was before Google was like what we'd commonly use to look for things online. And I can't remember what search engine it was, Webcrawler or something like that, you know. And we typed in volunteer work, Latin America. I wanted to learn Spanish while I was doing it. And this, some site came up with a list of places.

And one of them said, executive assistants, the national director in Honduras. And I knew nothing about the place and I just called and asked and they sent me the application and I went. But if I, you know that, that, that some people are really afraid of the dark or about swimming in the ocean or something like that, that, that deep set fear. Or when you're standing on a platform and a train comes past real fast or something. Like if I want to get that fear, I think to myself, what would my life be like if I had not picked up that phone that day and called? Like, it just, it changed absolutely everything. Hey, taking a quick break here to remind you to check out some of my sales training programs at jbarrows.com and use discount code podcast for 20% off the individual packages.

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Now let's get back to the show. That's fantastic. So let's talk about Honduras. How long did you spend there? Altogether, almost 15 years. 15 years. Walk us through those 15 years because at first it was just like, hey, I'm going there for the summer or whatever just to kind of help out a little bit. And then you just decided to stay. And kind of how did your role evolve there? So the first time I went, it was for one year. And I was as a volunteer. The commitment was a minimum of one year because we were working with kids. They didn't want people coming in and out all the time. And when I finished that year, I already knew I wanted to do something different. So I went back to the UK, went back to college to get my master's degree, but in international business, well, international development, sorry.

I then worked for a while in Peru in microfinance, seeing whether I could use kind of like the finance aspect to see how to help people, you know. But I would always go back to visit Honduras. And then when I was 27, I went back to visit the kids that I had worked with and just see the people that I knew there. And the man who was the director when I was there, who I worked for, he was then the president of the board. And he called me to his office and I thought he was going to ask me, how's life in London? And he said to me, the director's leaving in three months. I'd like you to take over. And I told him, I don't know how to do that. This is 250 employees, you know, working with hundreds of kids and thousands of kids across the different programs.

I said, well, I don't know how to do that. And he said, you have a good heart, the rest you can learn and I'll teach you. And so then we had a conversation about it and he was saying, all I'm doing is asking you for three years. And I finally said, okay, three years. And then I stayed for 12. Wow. So what did the role in, because we're going to get to the leadership components to this, but what did that role entail? Like what was, I guess, the job description, if you will, at the time, and then we can talk about how it evolved, but what was the job description at the time? So as, as a volunteer, I was just the assistant to the director. And then I work with kids in the evening. And then when I was the national director, I was the legal guardian of all the kids.

Oh, wow. So I've been the legal guardian of over a thousand kids in my life. But then also responsible for all the programs that we did there. We had a children's home. We had medical clinics. We had a school, workshops, university program. And then we ended up starting a whole bunch of new programs as well in partnership with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. We set up a home for kids displaced by violence in the confiscated house of a drug trafficker up in the northeast of the country, which was interesting when the sun showed up, when we started installing things, saying, what are you doing in my house? Oh, no. It was a spicy conversation. Yikes. So it was just responsible for all these different programs in a country that is beautiful and wonderful and very complicated.

I mean, it was the highest murder rate in the world from most of the 2010s. We had a military coup in 2009. We had, like, it was unfortunately a country that struggles with a lot of corruption and a lot of, a lot of the drug trade comes through there from, from South America. So there's, there are a lot of ills also kind of connected to that. So it was, my job was basically ensure that the kids were well, that everything was going fine, and that all of our different programs were running according to the mission that we had. So I'm going to skip ahead here but come back. When did you kind of come up with this AVC delegation framework? Was it while you were in Honduras or after? While I was in Honduras, it started coming together because I, I struggled.

It was a very humbling experience coming into a leadership position and suddenly having so many departments and, you know, 250 people working, working there. And to figure out how do we work together, first of all, I had to figure out who am I as a leader? Like, what do I, and when I first arrived there, I had it all wrong. I thought I was supposed to have all the answers and I was going to, you know, fix everything. I was going to tell everyone what to do. And it was a humbling process realizing that the people who were actually doing the work were the ones that knew how to do the work. And that my job was to support them in doing it, ensure that they were doing it towards the mission that we had, that we had signed up for and make sure that they had the things that they need to, to get it done.

And that I could take, remove any obstacles in the work that they were doing. But I struggled to figure out how to tell everyone across all the different departments how we were going to work together. So that's where I started kind of figuring out how to put it in a visual way, kind of so I could explain to people, this is, this is how we work together. This is our commitment to each other. This is how your responsibility fits in with my responsibility and kind of see how, how all those pieces fit into one as we're walking towards the mission. So it started there. But then of course, in positions that I've had since then, I've refined it as well. So when you, when you kind of showed up and you're like, this is new 250, holy smokes, I got to know everything.

I'm the leader, right? That, that false perception. What was a moment where you were like, this, this is, this is, I can't take this approach. Or was there a moment where you, you fundamentally realized you had to shift your style or like I said, was it more of an evolution? There were, it was a collection of moments. Sometimes it was me making a decision and it going horribly wrong and then realizing that if I had talked to other people first, my decision would have been different. Or if I had listened first, my, my decision would have been different. Sometimes it was in the very beginning, like I'd be sitting trying to fix a problem and I could see on the faces of the people that I was talking to.

These are people who've been there for many years and done this work for a long time that they just kind of, you know, you can see in the sparkle in their eyes that they're thinking, they're looking at you and thinking, what do you know? Like, what, what are you doing? And, and as that would happen, as that happened, I started realizing I'm doing something wrong here. And then the, the, what really pushed it forwards as well was that I was just getting increasingly more and more exhausted and burnt out because I thought I had to do everything. But I remember one of the times when it really hit home was when we had the, the woman that was in charge of communications for us. We had just done a big new project and it was my baby.

You know, I was, I wanted to write the thing online for it and everything. And she came up to me and she said, yeah, so what about that article? And I said, yeah, I haven't, I haven't gotten to it right now. And just, you know, it's just been a really busy few days. I'll get it to you tomorrow. And the next day she came to me and she asked me again and I was like, I'm sorry, tomorrow. And the next day she came to me and I still hadn't done it. And she said to me, do you like it when people, when you're given an opportunity where you can really shine and really prove to people what you can do? And I was like, of course I do. And she said to me, please don't take this one from me. And that's when I realized that delegating responsibility to people, like people sometimes think, oh no, he's lazy or she's lazy.

You know, they delegate a lot. No, those are the people, if it's done right, who are actually giving their people a chance to shine. They're giving their people a chance to prove themselves and to grow as professionals. And if you see it that way, then how you work together really changes. Yeah, that's really interesting. That must have hurt though. That must have been like, oh shit. Yeah. The important one here. Damn it. Absolutely. All right. So I'm going to get to delegation now, but let's go through this model, right? So it's an ABC model of delegation, autonomy, briefing, and consent. So could you just walk us through that framework? Well, first of all, I guess, give us the macro of kind of the mindset of this and then the breakout.

So I think the easiest way to describe it is, imagine you sit down with your boss, you know, and your boss, new boss or whoever, like says to you, okay, John, this is what we do. This is our mission frame. It makes a box and says, all of our time, effort, resources, everything that we do, we focus on this, what's inside this box. Now inside that box, this box is yours. And we'll call that your mandate frame. And all of your efforts and your responsibilities, we'll be focusing on that. You and your team, the people that you're responsible for are going to focus on that. I will teach you the three categories that are inside that box, A, B, and C. A is do what you want. B is do what you want, but inform me.

And C is ask me first. And don't worry, I'll be teaching you those as we go along. And as you prove yourself in the different things, we can move things from one category to another to give you more responsibility. Now, I need you to commit to this responsibility. And in exchange, I'll make three commitments with you. Number one, I will follow up with you in a way that actually helps. Number two, I will resolve any destructive conflict that comes up, either within your team or your team with other teams, like any of those obstacles that get in the way. And number three, I will commit to use every piece of work that we do together to help grow you as a professional. That, in a nutshell, is how it works.

Like in the ABC delegation framework, like we have tools for each of those pieces so that like practical things for managers to do, because we've seen that most managers actually want to delegate. They just don't know how, or they're afraid of letting go too much and losing control or keeping too much and becoming that micromanager. You know, so it's like we have practical tools that we give them to help them in those and with those commitments. Well, now I'm going to be selfish on my end. Because my biggest, and you know, my COO, my wife, myself, we all have the same problem of it's just for us to do it myself. And then it hits the burnout, right? Because we've been burned so many times by giving other people direction and expectations.

And then all of a sudden it comes back and it's, it's so bad. It's not just, oh, I need to tweak this a little bit. It's like, geez, now I got to reverse engineer this whole thing and redo it. So it's going to take me twice as long by delegating to this person. And there's only a, so there's only so many times that can happen until you just throw your hands up and say, no, you know, nevermind, I'll just do this. And that's actually been an issue for me my entire career. It's why I don't have, I've never had an executive assistant. The reason I've never had an executive assistant is because like, I am so meticulous with my approach and like my email inbox and you know, how I like my travel scheduled.

And that type of stuff. And I've gone to the extent of like recording the screen of exactly what I want them to do. And all of a sudden, and it still doesn't. So it's just, you know what? I'd rather stay up until midnight to do this myself because I know it's just going to get done that way. So how do you break that like limiting belief or, or, um, character flaw, if you will, uh, with, with this framework to break that belief? I think you need to ask yourself a pretty simple question. It's just like, how much do I want to grow? If, if the answer is no, I'm fine with the way things are right now and I can do it all myself. Then great. Like if you're not killing yourself doing it, you're not, you're not burning yourself out.

But if you, if you ask yourself, how much do I want to grow? And you want to be able to go past what you can do in 24 hours, even putting health aside and saying, okay, let's commit to 20 hours of work a day or 18 hours of work a day, you know, whatever. Like there, there does come a time where there's, it's a hard stop. I just can't fit any more into it. So if you ask yourself, how much do I want to grow? And you realize that you do want to do more than you're doing right now, then that process of teaching, which also is, is that's, that's part in that third, that third section, the third commitment becomes more important. And the investment of time at the beginning becomes so much smaller compared to the, compared to the future.

Like, so it's kind of like, I'm going to put myself through this right now in teaching this person, but with a, with a system that gives incremental responsibility, I can say, okay, no, this, we're going to put all of this in C right now. And then as you prove yourself, then we'll move it to B and you just need to inform me what you've already done. And after a while, once I see that that's working, we can move it into A and we'll, we'll catch that in evaluations and in, you know, in our check-ins, we don't need to talk about that anymore. So that, so it's actually a graduated scale, ABC, you start, you effectively start almost everything at C and, and as they earn, they move to B to A for different, different things that you want them to do?

You, you could do. Um, typically what we see is when you make a job description for someone, like when someone's coming in, assuming that they have a lot of the responsibility, like a lot of the experience that, that you expect for them to do the job that you're hiring them for. Some of the things will already be an A. You don't want every meeting that you have with your staff members to be about everything. That happened to me a lot years back where I'd be sitting in a meeting, think to myself, why, why are they telling me this? Like they don't need me for this. And the more I listen to it, the more they're going to think that I want to know about it and the more they're going to involve me in things that I don't want to be involved in.

Like, so it's kind of having those tools where it's just kind of like, okay, A, we don't talk about that in check-ins. We start with B, then we move on to C. Then we look at the mandate frame as a whole, just kind of like, or what are you struggling with? Then I typically, you know, say something that I, that I, I like what they've, what I've seen them do because like to give affirmation of what, what they're doing well. And then we close and I do, we just keep those, those meetings short, but it's kind of, it doesn't have to all start in C, but it, it can be kind of at the beginning, you'll have more things in C and in B. And as time goes on and they prove themselves, then you can move it more to A.

And once most of the things are in A, you know, well, this person's ready to move up already anyway. Is there a hiring profile that fits this more than others? Right. Cause I think that the key also is right. You put somebody a framework, great, but if they're just not the type of person that takes that type of correct, you know, coaching or whatever it is, it, you know, regardless of the framework, it's like, all right, you, you're not doing this. So, so is there, do you look for a certain type of profile? Cause you've been in some pretty dynamic and, and diverse environments. So it's not like the corporate world where you're like, I can hire this exact type of person. I can give them a personality profile.

They fit the mold and they'll, they'll fit into this system. So do you, do you, is it universal when this structure and how far, and actually as an added, sorry, as an added to that, if it is regardless, when do you kind of identify like this person just isn't the person that I can delegate stuff to? I mean, there's, there has to be hiring the right people is always important. It's not like you can have something else that will make up for, for hiring the wrong people. And there, there are great systems out there. One, there's, there's one in a book called who by, what is it? Street and smart. Like that, that is a phenomenal system. Very simple, that very step-by-step process for, for hiring people.

But once, once people come onto the team, like you have to have some kind of a process for cultivating leaders and that involves working through mistakes. Like one of the things that, that, that some people write about that, that works is to kind of like have a rule book on how we deal with mistakes, like how we talk about them and how we process them, kind of how, how we see them, how we work with them. But if people are consistently showing that despite you trying to build them up to be able to do what they want, what you need them to, or if they're showing that they don't have the attitude to do it, there does come a time when you have to say, I'm sorry, but like you're, you are important.

Our mission is important as well. And everyone that's working here, I can't put your, you know, your wellbeing above everyone's and above the missions. And, and I even in the book, I even go into details on how, how to best let someone go because it is an important part of delegating is understanding when someone is not, you cannot give them the responsibility. So, you know, I, I'm listening to this all through the corporate lens of, okay, you know, I can, I got a HR department. I, you know, they can hire the type of people, people I want and, you know, I can put them through a system and graduated through and see them in the office. So, you've been in Honduras, you've been in Fort Bliss, you've been in some pretty high stress, holy shit environments.

So how does it apply? Like, so, you know, with the Fort Bliss, for instance, when you were the chief of operations at the office of refugee resettlement in Fort Bliss, is that correct? Yeah, it was a shelter for the unaccompanied migrant children that were coming across the border, a huge program. So you're dealing with unaccompanied, like children with medical issues, with security, with logistics, with, with like chaos, the politics and, you know, everything in between. So, I guess when you came into that situation, how quickly did you apply this framework to level set everybody on expectation of how we deal with mistakes, how we do this, what's the, you know, what's the buckets that you do?

Like, so how was your, because I'm guessing we had to come in pretty hot to address what was going on, because it's not like, okay, hold on everybody, like we're going to, you know, we're going to close the border here for a little bit while I figure this shit out, right? So how did you even approach that? No, so I'll get, I'll get to Fort Bliss in a minute, but I just want to make one, one differentiation. Like there's, there are acute emergency situations and things like, you know, in the military, you know, this is not, I'm not going to sit around and discuss it. Like you've there, your work is to prove yourself as a leader so that when you're in battle, people follow you, like, and they trust you when you're, when you're there.

You don't want to have like some, there are certainly situations where like my boss, like when we were at Fort Bliss, like we had a contract, it was very clear what we need to do. And he had the word on what we were doing and it was so fast moving, you know, it's like you do this and that's what we did. And, and it's, it's the way it has to work. Once you're, if you're in a steady state organization, like doing work, it can be high stress work and it can be, and it can be urgent work, but once you're in a steady state and you have systems that are functioning to have a system of like an agreement of how we delegate that you can overlay on top of what already exists, just the kind of understanding of the, the kind of mindset that you're expecting of your managers when they're working with their team, how you expect them to work with their teams.

That can give tremendous, tremendous results. Like if you, there's, there was a great study that was done by Gallup, um, this year, they brought it out like the state of the workplace and they talk about employee engagement and in the U S I think 31% of employees are engaged, which is pretty dreadful. And then you look at the rest of the rest of the world in Spain, it's 9%, nine, these are people who are motivated and committed to their jobs and kind of show up and, and, and want to contribute. Then you have a big chunk of people who are the Simon quitters, the, the disengaged people who just show up, punch in, punch out. And then you have a percentage in the U S it's about 17% that show up and actively do damage to their organizations because they're so resentful.

Like, and this is from, from, from people's surveys, like that they've answered themselves. But the, but the, the phenomenal, the, like the shocking thing is what they found makes up for 70% of the variance and engagement levels from team to team is one thing. And it's the manager. They can say, just getting to know the manager, we can tell you what the engagement levels of the teams are going to be like. And if they then, they then compared like the, the companies that have high engagement to low engagement. And it's shocking the difference. It's like 71% lower absenteeism, 51% lower employee turnover, 23% higher profitability. So these are, these are like corporate interests. Like you, you, you want, you need these if you want to be successful.

And especially with the younger, the younger workforce that saying, you know, I need, I want to grow. I want to be, I want to be taught. I want to be developed. So it's an important thing. I, I mean, I think it's, I've, I knew that early in my career, like the number one reason people say or leave their company is their, their frontline manager, not leadership. You know, in the traditional sense, it's literally my boss. If I like my boss, I'll stay way longer, regardless of what's happening in the company, in the economy and all that other shit. If I hate my direct boss, I'm out. And, and I actually learned that early in my career. I remember this is, you know, where I was introduced to the corporate way of dealing with, with conflict.

I remember I had a boss who was like, he had just come, my first job in DeWalt and I was driving around and we were working, we drove around, Dodge Ram pickup trucks, giving away free tools to construction workers. And he had just come over from Japan. He was like 25, I was 22 and he was American, but, but he had the Japan mentality of work is life. Right. Type of thing. And we're working like 16 hours a day, 17 hours a day. And I, you know, I get, I'm like, Hey, earn it. You know, I'm like, like my dad always said, don't complain, just go. And like, after like eight, nine months, I'm like, this seems a little ridiculous. And I went to my boss and I said, Hey, uh, yo, this seems that the whole team's frustrated.

Like we're, we're, none of us are getting to sleep. You know, can we maybe, and he didn't. So then I ended up going to his boss and I was like, look, it's either him or me. Like, I'm sorry. Like, this isn't right. And so they promoted both of us, but it was like, but if, but it's that front line manager, if I, if, you know, I wouldn't have cared if he was great guy and whatever it is, I would have kept working that hard. But because he just, we didn't have a cool relationship. I was like, I, this is, I'm done. And I was after like six months, you know what I mean? I can't imagine this like these days. So, yeah. And it's, and it's, it's incredible how, how much people can like their bosses without kind of being friends with them.

Like if, and by that, I mean, like, if you just see that they, excuse me, is it respect a big piece of it too? Absolutely. And, and respect comes from when it's mutual. Like when, when your boss says to you, like, I'm, my intention is for you to grow. Like, I want to know what, what do you want to achieve? Like, I think one of the best conversations you can have with your, your staff is saying, where do you see yourself? Like, what, what would you like? And, and it could, it could be, well, in three years, I don't want to be working here. I want to be working there. It's like, okay, how can I help you to get what you need in order to do that? And in the meantime, do your best here. Like once, once it's a mutual thing of, you know, okay, we're looking out for each other.

You're, I'm looking out for you while I'm looking out for the mission. And you're looking out for, for me while we're looking out for the mission. That's funny because I did that with my, um, so a Morgan Ingram, who was one of my first employees, he's a young kid. He was like, I saw him up on stage and I was looking to grow my business from a training standpoint. I knew I couldn't replicate myself. So I had to hire the people. And I looked at him and I'm like, there's something special about this kid. And, you know, he's really young. And I remember after we kind of got to the point where I was like, Hey, you know, do you want to work on this? I told him, I go, look, give me three years. Give me three years.

I will teach you everything you need to know on how to build a business. Because I asked him the question that you said, I said, look, what do you ultimately want to do? And it, you know, a typical millennial response back then, which is I want to be a motivational speaker. Like every millennial, be a motivational speaker for a period of time. And I know, for instance, that, that sales training has a cap, right? Like, so sales is big, but sales, being a sales trainer, you can only get so far. Motivational speaker, like the sky's the limit. I mean, look at Tony Robbins, right? Like millions, billions of people impacted. So I knew I was a stepping stone for him regardless. And, and so I said, I go, give me three years.

I'll teach you everything, but I need you to bleed for me. I need you to go out there and I need you. I'm going to put you on a plane. You're never, you're never going to be home. You'll make a bunch of money, but I need you to go do that for me while I, and then I, and then in three years, you and I look at each other and say, do we still want to do this? And I, and it actually brings me to, we, we lasted four, but it was a very amicable split. It was, I was expecting it quite frankly. It brings me to the idea that it, I almost think, especially now with where we are in society and how the average personally stays X, you know, 1.5 years or whatever that might be. And CROs are getting fired, left, right?

So it's almost like I want to put together a contract for employment that is time bound. So it's like, I'm going to work here for two years. And then at the end of those two years, like, but I'm dedicated for those two years, almost no matter what happens. The same, same thing with almost like a marriage these days. I heard somebody say the other day that we should put together a seven year contract for marriages. So it's just like, so it keeps all the stress out of it. It's like, do I really want to, all right, I got to just, all right, I don't like her that much, but I got two more years in this and then I can move. Right. But I think it goes back to a lot of expectation setting, right? Which is, I think a lot about what your, what your framework is in a lot of ways.

It's like, as long as they know the expectation of how to make decisions, how they fit into the plan, you know, what their role is going to be and the mutual respect, it tends to work out. I think life tends to fall apart when expectations are misset. And that's why I'm giving people delegation and that type of thing. And I'm like, vague delegation comes back a bad product and now I'm upset, but it's, I didn't give the right expectations. Yeah. It's when they're, they're misset and when they're misaligned. Like, so it's, so to make, if you can make your people understand the value of the work that they're, they're doing, like the weight of the responsibility that you are giving them and then tie that to the responsibility that we have as a team to comply with the mission.

And then at the same time, tell them, you know, and I'm here for you. Like, I'm here to look out to, to help you grow. I'm here to, to step in. And if there are the typical conflicts that you see in, in, in an organization, I'll step in and help to fix those and get those obstacles out of your way as you're, as, as, as you're going along with your work. And I will connect with you in a way that actually helps you just get the work done without me getting in the way and without, and so, so that I can really support you. It just changes completely the dynamics of what's happening because it's going to like, yeah, we're here in this, we're in this together. We understand how we fit together. We understand that there's that respect and that caring, like the, that, that they actually matter to me and I, I, I want them to do well.

That very quickly becomes reciprocated. Yeah. And that magic happens. And I, and I think the alignment is something that a lot of companies in this and my, cause my experience is if you don't show somebody where they fit and how they align with the ultimate mission goal vision of the business, you'll, they're just going to do their job period. They will do whatever is on their job description. And you know, you'll find some that over and exceed whatever, but if they, if they feel like they're part of something bigger and they see how they fit into this, this vision here, you can get people to do 10 times more work than what you're quote unquote paying them for. Yeah, absolutely. And that to me is like, that's why a lot of leaders come to me and they'll say, Hey John, you know, I just, I don't understand.

Like why I, how do I get my reps to work as hard as I do? And how do I get, and I'm like, first of all, don't ever expect as a business owner, don't ever expect somebody, anybody to work as hard as you, unless you're going to give 50% of your company way too. You know what I mean? Like that's the only time you should ever expect anybody to work as hard as you as a business owner. But on the flip side, I asked, I asked them, well, when's the last time you really painted the vision for them of where this company is going? And I think it goes back to transparency too. Like I asked them like, are you looking for an exit here in the next two years? Yeah, I want to exit here. And have you told the company about that?

Well, no, because then they were, no, no, no, no, no, no, exact opposite. You tell the company that we're going to exit in three years, you give them a piece of the pie to help you get there. And then you can do magic. But if you don't tell them what you're trying to do in three years and you try to hire that, but you're trying to be profitable and just do your, they're just going to do their job and you're probably going to get turnover. So it's that transparency factor of leadership. That's huge. Yeah. I mean, I, when I hired my, my assistant director in, in Honduras a few years before I left, left there, um, in the interview that I had with him, I asked him, would you one day be interested in having my job?

And he looked at me and said, yes. And for me, that was just like, that was one of the reasons that I was like, yeah, absolutely. This is, that means I can give him a ton of work. I can give him a ton of responsibility and I'll be there to teach him and I'll teach him and he'll want to learn. So it's, so that, that part is tremendously important, but that like, just like you said, like, like when people don't understand how they fit into things, people fall up, everything falls apart. There's that, that famous story that I'm sure you've heard of before when, when Kennedy went to the space center and, um, he met one of the guys that was cleaning the floors there and he said, Hey, how's it going?

What are you up to today? And he said, I'm putting a man on the moon. And it's kind of like this, if you can create that sense of I'm this piece and they're that piece and they're this piece, but together we're going to do that. Like it changes how people approach their work. How do you combat the mentality that delegation is equivalent to lowering your standards or, or align with a lowering? Cause I think of that's like, and I'm going to, I'll put myself on a hot seat here. It, to a certain degree, I'm like, okay, if I'm okay with it being 80%, 75% is good. Then that's good enough for me. Right? Like, cause if it's going to take me three hours and I'm going to be up until midnight to do this versus delegated to somebody else, and it's only 75% of what I would do.

I make that calculation and I accept that it's not going to be what I think it'll be. So how do you break or, or help me help others listen, listening to this, including myself deal with that? Cause that's a reality in a lot of ways, right? Is it the wrong perception? Is it the, is it, how, how should we reshape that? No, I mean, there's, there's certainly an element of truth in that. I mean, there's, that's a common fear, but I would ask the question in response to that. I would say, well, how many of those three hours that you would have to invest to do it yourself? How many of those days would you have to invest in actually training the person to do it right? Like, so it's kind of, I might lose a day because I have to really train them to do this, or I need to, I might lose a certain amount of money because I need to pay for trainings because I, I don't have the time for it, but there are other people that can train them.

Like, what is the investment in either time or resources that I need to do right now so that the next time and the time after that, and the time after that, they can do it themselves. But it's kind of like this, this always this sense of, we all have to be growing. Otherwise we're starting to die. Like we all have to be growing in some way or another. And so it's, and how does that work with incremental responsibility and then giving responsibility, having accountability, following up with them and in, in a way that, so that you actually know what's working and what's not, but doing it in a way where you still have control on that dial where you can say, you know what, this time, you know, I thought you were ready for this and that you could just do it and just inform me, but we're going to move this back to sea for a while.

And I want you to ask me first, bring me the ideas so that I can see what you're thinking, but we're going to move it back to there for a while. Or, you know, you've been telling me about this for the past few months. You've been doing it spot on every single time. And, and you evidently don't need me with this anymore. Let's move that, that to a, we'll, we'll catch that in evaluations, you know, once every three months or six months or whatever, but we're not going to talk about that in our, in our, in our weekly check-in meetings. So it's kind of just seeing the big picture makes the small picture much less painful. Totally. How does, how much does culture determine delegation? I mean, there are some cultures that are very hierarchical, right?

Like you, you are here, like in Japan, it's like, you know, when I train in different cultures here in the U S you could send an email to the biggest CEO in the world and be like, Hey man, let's talk. I'm going to have this conversation. You do that in Japan, you'll get fired. You'll get probably thrown in jail. Right. Um, so, so how does, how do you incorporate with all the different cultures you've, I mean, experienced yourself? How do you, how much does culture dictate, um, the, the delegation mentality approach structure? I mean, it's, it's certainly a factor and there's, there's really interesting work done on what is it? The culture map. I forget right now who the name of the, the writer who wrote it, but she didn't, she made this, she compares the different like countries in the, in the world and shows like how hierarchical they are and how open they are to, to, to, to voicing criticism and things like that.

And that's, that's certainly a factor to include in that. I saw in the Latin American culture, like I used to, to laugh a lot with some of, some of my staff because they would say that me is an American, I was born in the U S but then I'm German. So I'm going to, well, so like they would say as a gringo, I, um, I was very often quite direct and I would laugh and I'd say, and you guys always speak with flowers in your mouth, you know, very, just kind of like round and so, so, I mean, it's certainly, you have to take that into consideration when you're, when you're, when you're talking to people and working with them. But what I found really helps is to have simple tools. Then it's not rude anymore when you're complying with a tool.

Like for example, the check-ins that we would have once a week, I mean, sitting down and when, when they would just start from the beginning and go through everything that they've done and I'd be trying to cut them off and say, no, you know, get to this. It was, it was often perceived as, as rude. But when we sat down and we said, okay, remember we have this tools, this tool, ABC check-ins like where we're going to start with B, then go C, then look big picture. And then, you know, and then close pretty much. Well, I would, I would add in, you know, that part of seeing, saying something that I, that I liked about the job that they were doing. But when there's a tool, it's kind of like, you know, we're going to sit down and do this ABC check-in, this tool.

It's going to take maybe 15 minutes. If we finish in six, we give each other our time back. Like this is, I don't want to take away your time. You don't want to take away mine. Like we all have a lot to do. So let's just carry out this piece that, that we've agreed on. Then all of a sudden it's not rude anymore to do it that way. And I think that managers who insist on saying, no, I don't want a system where people can give me feedback or where, where I'm giving responsibility that worked 20, 30 years ago. You know, that worked in the nineties, maybe the early two thousands, but for young people today, you do that to them, they up and leave. Yeah. And it's, it's actually, are you a fan of American football?

I am. So do you know the, the New England Patriots, right? Of course. So Bill, Bill Belichick, um, and what's happening now with like Ray, Mike Vrabel, the, the, the coach, you've talked about a lot of things that are like, it's almost this beautiful case study of this entire conversation because Bill Belichick at the time, back in the early two thousands, I didn't have the t-shirts to do your job. And he did, he didn't give a shit about culture. He didn't give a shit about anything. It was you fit into my system and I don't care. It is a top down, you know, but there was from an ownership. There was that you go down to the, the, the janitor and they, you know, they took pride in their work because of the, the, the overall leadership of Kraft and those types of things.

But Belichick on the team. And then after a while, I mean, yeah, Brady left, but you could just tell his approach wasn't working anymore because these kids didn't respect him. They didn't have the history. They didn't give a shit. They weren't like, they're coming out of school being like, dude, fuck off. Like, like I, I'm going to post on Instagram. Like I'm, I'm in the locker room. I should be doing some cool stuff. I'm a brand and he just wouldn't change. And so that's why it just got ugly. Now Mike Vrabel comes in with a little bit of the old school mentality, but he was a player and he, he cares about the culture. Like he, you could tell that his players know that he cares about their development and therefore they care about him.

And what's happening this year is absolute magic. Cause we were so bad last year with effectively the same team. You have one leader comes in that changes that entire dynamic. And now we're the best team in the league. And it's, it's such a glaring example of leadership and buy-in and getting people bought into a vision and that whole thing. I think it's just, I mean, I know people are sick of me, you know, talking about the Patriots cause I would be too, but I just think it's an awesome example. Yeah. No, I mean, it's, people need to, you know, back in the nineties, the, the, there was an article that came out in the, in, in Harvard business review where they talked about, you know, leadership and management and how they're not the same thing.

And it really changed the world because back in the, in those times that the companies were very rigid and very like, you know, the Belichick system kind of very hierarchical. You do what I say. And people knew that people were willing to sacrifice a lot of their own autonomy for a job for life. Like I know a lot of far older people than me who were started with one company and they finished with that company when they retired. That doesn't happen anymore. And people, companies need to understand that if you're not investing in your managers to know how to deal with the people well, if you're not investing in your managers to know how to build up engagement in your teams, whether it's a football team or whether it's your, your, your sales team that are, that are working on, on a daily basis in some sales company, if you're not investing in those managers to have those skills that can inspire their teams to do what they need to do, those managers are incredibly expensive.

You're spending a ton on them far more than their, than their, their salaries. So I think it's, it's time to realize, you know, we can complain as much as we want that the, the, the workforce is changing, but at the end of the day, I mean, who, who are you going to go and hire? Like the, these, these are the people and they're tremendous. They just have a different, they have different expectations. And a lot of the expectations, if you actually stop and listen to them are, are reasonable. I want to grow. They want to grow. And it's like, okay, well, let's, let's just grow together. Then let's figure out a system so that they have to commit to responsibility. But at the same time, let's have that system, allow them to grow as professionals.

And when that happens, like that synergy happens, things, things are different. Love it. Well, what's, what's next? What's next for you? What are you looking forward to with this, this framework? Like, where are you looking to take this, I guess? So we work with, with companies to help influence it. We do that through keynotes. We do it through workshops. We do it through trainings. We do it through advisory. A lot of people have been saying that they want to be able to join these kinds of workshops, even if their companies are saying that they, you know, they're not interested in it. So we're starting to open up workshops where people can go online and take the workshop. They're like hour and a half workshops where it's not company specific.

Just because we've seen that it's tremendous how people's lives change when you give them the tools to do something. I mean, if you tell someone, go and delegate better, half of the people will think, okay, well, no, I'm a manager. But then like, I'm not great at delegating, but that doesn't matter. Like, it's, it's just a little piece. Or some of them will think, oh, well, it's just, it's just defining who does like, you have a task, pick the best person and then follow up with them. And that's, and that's that. We look at delegation as something much more than that. If you look at the most management issues, like if you've had a manager who's a micromanager, that's a delegation issue. If they had a manager who doesn't support you, that's a delegation issue.

If you had a manager who's just angry and shouting all the time, I mean, that's their delegation motors operandi. That's how they're getting you to do the work that you need to do. So, so understanding those like practical tools to actually get better at that, instead of just saying you have to get better at that, like really changes how people approach work. And I love working in a team where I feel like I grow. I love working in a team where even if I, I've worked many times with people where it's like, we're not friends. Like we wouldn't want to go for a beer together. But when we work together, I know that I'm looking out for him or for her and he or she is looking out for me. And we're just kind of have that, that respectful understanding of how this fits together and of the commitments that we've made to each other.

And when that, when that, when that actually happens, people just work differently. Yeah. I agree, my friend. So in the interest, I think we could keep unpacking a lot of this stuff. Because like I said, I got my own issues with a delegation that I need to handle myself. So I probably should go through this course and read this book. I didn't skim through the book and pick up a few stories, but probably should go into detail in it. So, but with that, let's leave a little bit to the, for the audience to go find out themselves. Where can they find out more information about what you're working on and everything else? So they can go to www.abcdelegation.com. If they go there, there's, there's all the information there on the website.

There's also my LinkedIn is at the, at the bottom there where they can connect with, with me through that. I believe the workshops at the moment, we have them posted on LinkedIn. So if they go to the website and find my LinkedIn, they can find the workshops that we're, that we're offering at the moment. But yeah, all the information is there. All right. Perfect. Well, I encourage everybody to go check it out, especially if, you know, this is a bottom up and top down thing. You know what I mean? And I think this is one of those ones where reps could go kind of, maybe go get a little bit of guidance if they're having the challenge with a manager to give some, maybe some suggestions on how we can work better together.

Whereas leadership should really look from a framework standpoint to see if, especially if they're losing people and, you know, the, the morale isn't there and their turnover is high. I think that's probably obviously a pretty big delegation issue happening within those organizations. Absolutely. But even, even if the whole organization doesn't want to do it or they don't see the value in doing it, if you do it with your team, I can guarantee you that it's going to be the team that people want to work for. Like, I found out like in Honduras, we were doing amazing work and we had an amazing team and it wasn't long before people that worked in the same organization, but in other countries in Nicaragua and, and, and, and other places were calling me and saying, I want to come work for you.

I was like, why do you want to come work here? Like Honduras was a rough country. Like back then where you're facing a lot of issues. And they were just saying, because your people end up working in Mexico at headquarters. There you go. I'm excited. Yeah. Well, yeah. There we go. Lovely. Awesome. Well, I really appreciate the conversation here, Stefan, and very appreciative of the work that you do around the world, especially with all the humanitarian stuff that you put it together and the people that help. So I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you very much for having me. It was a real pleasure to be here. Absolutely. And everybody, hopefully you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day's going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know you had a good day. And the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now, and I can't thank you enough. Now, to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network.

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