Episode 39 – Dr. Ken Blanchard – Leaders On Leadership
In servant leadership, those who rise above the rest are not only expected to provide instruction and approval from their members. More importantly, they are also the ones who go way beyond their usual duties to work hand-in-hand with their team, and therefore discover their needs, understand their struggles, and appreciate their hard work. Leadership expert Dr. Ken Blanchard believes this is the most effective form of leadership, as it makes them more approachable, relatable, and grounded in reality. He talks with Dr. Tracey Jones about how serving others can result in charismatic leaders, as well as the concept of one-minute redirects, the importance of humility, and how to commit to a particular goal without wearing yourself out.
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Dr. Ken Blanchard – Leaders On Leadership
Our guest is a world-renowned leadership expert, Dr. Ken Blanchard. He has written 65 books and sold over 23 million copies. We are excited to have him share what it takes to pay the price of leadership.
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I have the tremendous honor and privilege of having Dr. Ken Blanchard as our guest. He is one of the most influential leadership experts in the world. He's the co-author of the iconic bestsellers, The One Minute Manager and The New One Minute Manager as well as 65 other books whose combined sales total more than 23 million copies. He's the Cofounder with his wife, Margie, of The Ken Blanchard Companies. It’s an international management training and consulting firm, and this is located in San Diego, California. He also co-founded Lead Like Jesus, a worldwide organization committed to helping people become servant leaders. Ken has received numerous awards and honors for his contributions in the fields of management leadership and speaking to include being my reader on my PhD. Ken, I am excited to have you as a guest.
What a joy it is for me too, Tracey. Bless you and hope He’ll bless the people who are reading.
Ken, you knew my father well and you had many things in common. You are one of the world's renowned leadership experts. My father adored leadership and was a constant student of it. He wrote a book called The Price of Leadership where he talked about the price that a leader has to pay to sit in the chair of leadership. The first price that he talked about was loneliness. My father said that the leader, a lot of times, has to set the pace and lead the way for others to follow.
That means he has to separate himself or herself from the crowd because there's nobody that can lead your group the way that you can do it. In leadership, we think of the great man theory and standing up there in the accolades, but can you share with me times when you have felt the loneliness of leadership? They say it's lonely at the top. How does a leader process loneliness that may be different than the other type of loneliness that we feel in our lives?
Tracey, I can't remember being lonely because one of the keys of The One Minute Manager is once goals are clear, your job is to get out of your office, wander around, and see if you can cheer people on. How can you be lonely when you're running around, cheering your people on, and having some fun with them and all? You're not telling them what to do in managing them. You're saying, “Attaboy, attagirl, if you need any help, let me know.” I don't feel lonely. A lot of people say, “Have you felt lonely during this pandemic?” I said, “No, I've been on the phone with people I haven't talked to for years, and I've learned technology.” This Zooming stuff is unbelievable. We had a Zoom call company meeting with 250 people on it around the world. Isn't that amazing?
It is incredible. Is there a time, Ken, where you felt like you had to step out from everybody else? I know you have a tremendous team of supporters. Has there ever been a time where you realized, “I see it. Everybody else may not see it. I need to move on out ahead of everybody?”
That's part of leadership. First, you need to set the vision and direction, and that's sometimes stepping out there. I'm a big fan as you know of servant leadership and a lot of people think that that's about the inmates running the prison or trying to please everybody and all. There are two parts of servant leadership. The first one is vision and direction, values and goals, and that's where the leaders got to be out front. Not that you do those all by yourself, but you’ve got to make sure that that's out front in people.
This is why we're in this business. This is what we hope to accomplish. These are the values that are going to guide our behavior. These are the goals we want you to focus on. That's the leadership part of servant leadership. Once that's done, then you move to the servant part of servant leadership. You philosophically turn that pyramid upside down and now you work for them, cheering them on, seeing what you can do to help them win, and all that kind of thing. That's what the two big parts of leadership roles are all about. I've never been that lonely as a leader.
I love that you talked about servant leadership. It isn't about advocating the leadership role. Intrinsically, you understand leaders have the responsibility or the shoulder of setting the vision but there are some people in leadership positions that are scared to make a decision. When they step out for the first time, it becomes scary because they feel like, “Everybody should be marching alongside me.” Sometimes, there could be a little bit of a lag time there.
Servant Leadership: Leaders must always put direction, values, and goals out front and not do them all by themselves.
The big issue, Tracey, on that whole loneliness thing is the ego. We call that Edging God Out or Everything Good Outside. There are two ways that the ego comes into play. One is false pride when you have a more than philosophy. You think you're brighter than all, so you could care less about what they think. You're charging on with everything. The other one is fear or self-doubt, which comes from a less than philosophy and you don't want to be seen. You're hiding in your office. What we need to do is get people out of their own way.
We've started a twelve-step EGO's Anonymous program because it's the biggest addiction there is. The way you overcome false pride is with humility and a lot of people think that's a weakness. Rick Warren said, “People with humility don't think less than themselves. They just think about themselves less.” The way to overcome fear or self-doubt is to trust the unconditional love of God because God loves you no matter what. If you feel comfortable with who you are, then you're out there with people not to manage them, but to cheer them on and to make sure that they know where they're headed, what you're trying to accomplish, and helping them get there.
Based on what you said, I remember reading The Power of Positive Thinking and that was the main thing. How can you be negative when you are made in God and know God loves you? I was talking to Don Hutson's wife, Terri Murphy, and that was the same thing she said. When you have these values and you're committed to them, you may not have people physically with you yet but that's what leads you and let you know, “You are going to get through this.” You did allude to that in your initial answer. Sometimes, when we are convinced of the right way to go, you have such clarity that you lead the path and others will follow. When you dialed in those values, not to self but to a higher calling, that loneliness isn't as important because you know you have a higher purpose and you're going to start to go along your way.
Robert Greenleaf, who's considered the modern father of servant leadership, although I look at Jesus as the real father of servant leadership, said, “You need to serve first and lead second.” You mentioned Norman Vincent Peale. What a wonderful opportunity I had to write a book with him when he was 86 years old. We wrote The Power of Ethical Management: Integrity Pays! You Don't Have to Cheat to Win. Norman constantly said that positive thinkers get positive results. If you feel positive about yourself and other people, you're going to get those great results.
You're going to draw those great people that resonate with that. The second price that my dad talked about was weariness and you've been doing this a long time. My dad always said, “Tracey, anytime you do anything worthwhile in life, you're going to have some people that do way more than as expected and some people that do way less than expected.” There's good loneliness and there's bad loneliness. There's good weariness and there's bad weariness that depresses you. How do you keep going on, Ken, and how do you replenish yourself?
The whole weariness thing is that you're into your job and your work all the time. One of the things I learned from Norman is that we have two selves. We have an external, task-oriented self that chooses to get jobs done, and then you have a thoughtful, reflective self. Which of those selves wakes up quicker in the morning? The alarm goes off. John Ortberg, who's a great pastor, said, “Why don't we call that the opportunity clock or it's going to be a great day clock?” No alarm. Immediately, you jump out of bed. You're eating while trying to get dressed and you jump in your car. You're in the car front and you're racing here and there around meetings. When you get home at night, you're absolutely exhausted, fall into bed, and don't have the energy to say goodnight to somebody who might be lying next to you. The next day, you're out of there again and you're caught in a rat race.
I love Lily Tomlin, the great Hollywood philosopher. She said, “The problem with the rat race is even if you win it, you're still a rat.” One of the ways that I found weariness is I enter my day slowly in solitude, prayer, and reading good stuff. I read the Daily Word, Jesus Calling, and some scriptures and all, and then I think about my day. I read my mission statement, my values and all, and say, “How do I want to be today?” You might say, “How do you get the extra time?” You need to also go to bed reasonably. Margie and I are always in bed by 9:00 and then we're up by 5:30 to 5:45. We have plenty of time to end our day and all.
You need to get as much done as you possibly can, but don't get fanatical about it so that you don't get it to sleep or any other things like that. Weariness is a choice. The way you're weary is when you're doing something you don't love to do. The important thing is to find something you love to do and you'll never have to work another day in your life. The reason why your father and I have always had tremendous energies is that we've always loved what we've done. You fire out of bed, let's go. We also constantly are in prayer, talking to the Lord, and finding ourselves.
That's what he told me growing up because in our vacations, we go on book speaking engagements with him and he's like, “Work is more fun than fun. Fun is more fun than work.” It was his blend of he loved what he was doing. I love how he rolled it all together. I love the alarm clock. That's incredible. Why do we call it that? Ken, you get up early and you do your devotions, you say you read your mission statement and get focused in again on what you're about, what your purpose is, and what you're going to serve and do.
My mission is to be a loving teacher and an example of simple truths to help myself and others to awaken to the presence of God in our lives, so we realize that we're here to serve, not to be served. If I remember that, I'm into simple truths and want to help people to get out of their own way and realize that they're here to serve, not to be served. Jesus said, “Even I have come to serve, not to be served.”
Servant Leadership: Accomplish as much as you possibly can, but don't get fanatical about it.
That brings us to the third price of leadership, which is abandonment. At that point, my father always said, “We need to abandon what we like to think about and what to think about in favor of what we need and ought to think about.” You're sharing that about your mission focus. That orients your day, not only the devotional, the quiet time to replenish your soul, and the internal reflection of self. That mission statement helps you get clarity on what conversations you need to have because there's tons of stuff trying to pull us off mission all day long. How do you stay focused on that? I love that mission statement. That’s huge.
One of the things about that whole thing about what you make choices on and all that is I never was much of a journal writer because I have friends who are writing journals in 3 or 4 colors and they write poetry and all. I had a buddy of mine, Bill Hybels, who founded the Willow Creek Community Presbyterian Church. He said, “Blanchard, you've goofed up my life for a long time and now you even goofed in my writing of journals.” What he was realizing was that he was the chaplain for the Chicago Bears and after Bible study, the coach would go over the game films and talk about what they did well and then what they needed to work on and do better.
He said, “Now I have a journal that I put the date and I put at the top of it, and then do it at the end of the day praisings. What did I do that's consistent with who I wanted to be? Redirections, which is, what did I do that I wish I hadn't done or might set up an apology?” That gives you your abandonment list. If things keep on popping up on that redirection list then you need to help and set a goal. “I need to let go of that and abandon that.”
One of the things in the doctoral program was we had to focus on the fruit of the spirit we wanted to grow in. Of course, as a hard charger, type A, mine was contentment. I did at the end of the day my contentment journal where I listed 25 ways that I had seen God show up or just the blessings every day. I love the flip side of that because my dad always told me, “Yes, for all the successes you had today, there are things that you did that are contributing to your failures and are still holding you back.” I love that you call them redirections. That's brilliant.
One-minute praisings and one-minute redirects. We changed the name of The New One Minute Manager from One Minute Reprimand to One Minute Re-Directs because it's more consistent. One of the things we found is top-down leadership is no longer relevant. What people want is side-by-side leadership, particularly young people. Not that they want your job but they want to know that they can contribute something. People ask me, “What's the biggest quality to be a great leader today?” It’s to listen more than talk, be there to help people, and find out how they're doing and all. When you're praising somebody, you might say, “I saw you did this. How do you feel about it?” Not just tell them how you feel but how do they feel about it. Keep the ball in their court as much as they want. They say, “If God wanted us to speak more than listen, He would have given us two mouths.”
I love the redirect because if there's something where you said, “We need to apologize or talk,” because one of the most terrible things a leader or a spouse can do is not address something right away. Let stuff harbor and go underground because it metastasizes and it blows up. It keeps you at the end of the day, forgive us our sins. Every day we have to go back and say, “This is what I did good and this is what needs ‘redirected.’” Ken, thank you so much for that. That's absolutely brilliant.
I wrote a book with Margaret McBride, who was my literary agent for years. We call it The 4th Secret of the One Minute Manager, the one-minute apology because if you realize and as you reflect on the day that you did something particularly to somebody else, you want to go right away and apologize. When you apologize to somebody, you're not asking them to forgive you at all. It's coming from you to get this out of you, but also to share with them that this was so unlike you, as far as you are concerned. “Please give me feedback if I ever do this again.”
You prevent them from becoming alienated followers. They were once in love with the organization, all of a sudden, they feel like they got thrown under the bus. Even as a newlywed you were loved at one time, but all you need is those little bars to stay unaddressed and you slowly start diverging and realizing that this other person doesn't respect or value. That’s brilliant. You said that the fourth secret was the one-minute apology.
One of the things that Margie and I, and this will be 58 years in 2020, we agreed that we would never go to bed angry. We would stay up all night if we had an area we need to deal with. I've married way above myself and so does your dad.
Congratulations on 58.
Servant Leadership: Always over-communicate rather than under-communicate.
You want to over-communicate rather than under-communicate.
Dad would always say whenever somebody would say whatever year and if you told him 58, he'd say, “That's the worst year,” because he had been married for so long. He was so silly about that. That's absolutely wonderful. Over-communicate. Can't be enough of that and thank you for that. Ken, the last price that he talked about was vision, and people looking at you with 65 books are like, “Ken is a visionary.”
What my dad talks about in The Price of Leadership and my dad would clearly say to everybody, he wasn't this incredibly brilliant man. He flunked out of school in the eighth grade. He came from a rough background of poverty but he called vision, somebody that sees what needs to be done, and does it. A lot of people see what needs to be done, but they don't take action. Can you share with me how you gain clarity? How do you help people uncover their vision? Also, how did you get clarity or an epiphany in your career? I know you've talked about the different ebbs and flows of running an organization. Can you share with me where you had a vision that may be changed or you had to re-adopt it?
First of all, you need to get a sense of your own personal vision and what business you are in. I mentioned my mission statement. In fact, I did a thing for ATD at the National Conference on how to develop a compelling personal mission statement or vision statement and people can get that from ATD. I walked them through a process because it's important to know who you are, where you're going, what's going to guide your journey, and all that. The same goes for your organization and the rest of your life. What happens is sometimes you have a vision about where you're going to go and something happens.
When I was in school, I decided that I wanted to be a Dean of Students and all that kind of thing and work with students but I wanted to be a faculty member. When I was getting my doctor's degree, you'll get a kick out of my faculty. They said that I couldn't write and if I wanted to be at a university, I needed to be a full-time administrator, not a teacher. The first job I got was Administrative Assistant to the Dean of the business school at Ohio University with a fellow member Harry Everson. When I got there, he said, “Ken, I want you to teach a course. I want all my Deans to teach a course.”
I never thought about teaching because in universities, if you can't publish, you’ll perish. He said, “I don't care anything about it. I want you to teach.” Paul Hersey had arrived as Chairman of the management department of Ohio University so he put me in Hersey’s department. I taught a basic management course and I had done a doctoral dissertation on Fred Fiedler, who was the first Situational Leadership theorist. After a couple of weeks, I came home and told my wife, Margie. I said, “This is what I want to do. It’s to teach. This is fun.” She said, “What about the writing?” I said, “I don't know. We'll figure something out.”
I had heard Hersey taught a great course on leadership so I stopped him in December of ‘66 and said, “Paul, could I sit in on your class next semester?” He said, “You want to take it, take it for credit,” and he walked away. I thought, “That's interesting. I had a PhD and he didn't.” He wants me to take his course for credits. I told Margie and she said, “Is he any good?” I said, “He's supposed to be great.” She said, “Get your ego out of the way and take his course.” I had to talk the registrar into letting me in so I signed up and I wrote all the papers and all.
In June of ’67, Hersey came into my course and he said, “Ken, I've been teaching leadership for ten years. I'm better than anybody but writing has never been my big skill area. I enjoy it but they want me to write a textbook. I've been looking for a co-author and I found one, you're such a good writer.” I went, “He read my papers.” He said, “What do you think about writing it with me?” I said, “We’re going to be a great team.” We wrote this Management of Organizational Behavior. It's now in its tenth edition in 2020. It sells more now than it did back in the ‘60s.
I went to the dean and told him, “I quit as an administrator. I'm going to be a faculty member. I got a book coming out.” He said, “You can't quit.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “I was going to fire you because you’re a lousy administrator,” which I am. When we finally started a company, Margie became the President. She's much better doing that. I'm a head cheerleader and all that. It’s a little bit like your dad. He was a head cheerleader. Here I had a thing I was going to do, and all of a sudden, the game changed because they told me I couldn't do that. Life is what happens to you when you're planning on doing something else.
I had no idea that's how you came out with that first book, which everyone knows in references. I even referenced it in my dissertation. That’s incredible.
When we went to California on sabbatical leave, Adelaide Bry, who was a wonderful writer, wrote Visualization: Directing the Movies of Your Mind was one of the first people on self-curing of cancer. She said, “I have a party of authors in San Diego.” I got invited because of my textbook. We get there and Margie meets Spencer Johnson. Spencer had written all these children's books with his wife. A ValueTales Series, The Value of Courage: The Story of Jackie Robinson, The Value of Believing in Yourself, Story of Helen Keller, The Value of Honesty, and The Tale of Abraham Lincoln. Margie hand carries him over and says, “You guys want to write a children's book for managers. They will read anything else.”
Servant Leadership: Your number one customer is your people.
Spencer is writing a One Minute of Scolding thing with a psychologist on how to discipline kids so I invited him to a seminar that I was doing. He was writing there for parenting. He sat in the back and laughed. He all came running up at the end and said, “Forget parenting, let's do the One Minute Manager.” Since he was a children's book writer, and I'm a storyteller, we decided to write a parable. We finished that book and self-published it initially because nobody knew us in New York. We sold 20,000 copies with no advertising through the Young Presidents’ Organization. We went to New York and we had a record. We're on the Today Show in September 1962 and go on the bestseller list the next week and never go off for 2 or 3 years. I started my whole parable writing and you say, “Why do I write 65 books?” They're all short.
Dad loves that. Those are bestsellers. Leaders are busy and we keep them 1.5 or 2 hours to read. There's no excuse for not reading them. As we wrap up our time here, Ken, is there anything else that you would like to share? We've got leaders that are dying to hear your wisdom on what it takes a leader to be a leader or the price of leadership that you paid. Any final comments or thoughts you want to share with our readers?
The biggest thing is to realize that leadership is not about you. It's about the people that you're serving. With servant leadership, John Maxwell wrote the foreword to a book that I wrote, which got all the key people in the field to write their thoughts on servant leadership. It’s called Servant Leadership in Action. I’ve got Laurie Beth Jones, Simon Sinek, Brené Brown, Marshall Goldsmith, Patrick Lencioni, you name it. What John said in the foreword is, “The only way to get great results and great human satisfaction is through servant leadership.” It's not a soft form of leadership because you have vision and direction. That starts it and then you move to the servant part.
My big command is the world is in desperate need of a different leadership role model. We've seen what self-serving leaders have done in every sector of society. We've seen some of it in Washington. They're not solving problems. They're fighting on who's going to get elected. What we need are people that are there to serve and not to be served. When you see companies where they get it, people say, “Blanchard, who does what you are always thinking about in your teaching?” I said, “Only the winning companies like Southwest Airlines in airlines, Nordstrom in retail, Disney in entertainment, Wegmans in the grocery business, Synovus in financial services, Starbucks for coffee.” They're all leaders in their field and all of the people that run those realize that this is important.
Your number one customer is your people. If you take care of your people, train them, love them, and support them, they will go out of their way to take care of your number two most important customer. The people buy your products and services, they will become raving fans of you, and become part of your sales force. That takes care of the third group you needed to worry about the owners and the financial people. A lot of people think you're in business to make a profit. No profit is the applause you get creating a motivating environment for your people so they'll take good care of your customers. Remember that out there for sure.
Thank you so much. Ken, how can people get a hold of you?
They can get a hold of me from KenBlanchard.com. I also have LeadLikeJesus.com because you want to do that. That's a ministry all over the world and that's headquartered in South Carolina. Our Blanchard company is out in California. I wanted to make sure that people didn't want to get all those things confused. Jesus is the greatest servant leader and leader of all time. That’s been a fun journey. We also have a website, KenBlanchardBooks.com if you want to look at all the books that we have. Your dad certainly helped me get going on a bunch of stuff. I would recommend they all find out more about tremendous books and your dad's writings because he was one of the greatest human beings ever lived, so was your mom. I'm glad that they're together again, for sure.
I am too. Ken, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us, for your heart, and that you are still continuing to make this world a more tremendous place. Thank you for all you've meant to me. You've been there since I got back, not an email, text, or phone call, and two seconds later, you're back in touch. I can't thank you enough for that.
God bless you. I love you.
I love you too, Ken. Take care. Thanks so much to our readers for this Tremendous Leadership Podcast Leaders on Leadership. Leave us a rating, like, and share us. We're everywhere. Have a tremendous day.