Yesterday I called an employee at my horse feed company in Las Vegas. I'll call him Larry. I asked him to grab a number off a bill of lading and call me back.
A few minutes later my phone rang. I picked up, put it to my ear, and before I could even say hello, I heard him blurt out, “71.50.”
And here's what actually happened next, the part nobody talks about.
Inside my head, in about half a second, I had already decided who Larry was.
Rude. Careless. Doesn't listen. How many times have we been through this?
None of those thoughts came out of my mouth. But if I had picked up that conversation right then, Larry would have felt every one of them. Because people always do.
That is where most leadership goes sideways. Not in the words. In the two seconds before the words.
I've been leading people for more than 30 years. I've made almost every mistake there is, and I've practiced a lot of them long enough to be sure they don't work.
Here is what took me way too long to figure out:
Your employees are not reacting to your feedback. They are reacting to what they can feel you already believe about them.
You can say all the right words. Use all the right frameworks. Follow every communication script you've ever been handed. If underneath it you've decided the person is the problem, they will know. They will defend. They will shut down. They will hide the next mistake instead of bringing it to you.
Fear goes up. Trust goes down. And you wonder why nothing changes.
I didn't say what I was thinking. I thanked him, hung up, and gave myself about 30 seconds.
In those 30 seconds I did three things, and this is the whole episode in a nutshell:
1. I noticed I was angry. Most leaders skip this step and think they're hiding it. You're not. Your people can feel it before you walk in the room. My horses taught me that one. People are more perceptive than we give them credit for.
2. I separated the behavior from the person. The problem was how the call got handled. The problem was not Larry. A person can do something wrong without something being wrong with them.
3. I protected Larry in my own head before I said a word to him. Not by pretending nothing happened. By reminding myself that whatever he did, it didn't change what he's worth as a human being.
Then I called him back, asked him to meet me in the barn for five minutes, and we talked about the work. Not about him.
Total time inside my head: under a minute. Total time for the whole conversation: about 16 minutes. Compared to the years I used to spend cleaning up the damage from doing it the other way, that is the best trade I've ever made.
That is the whole principle. But the order is what most leaders get wrong.
You protect the person first, inside your own mind. Then you address the work.
Skip that step and you'll think you're giving feedback. What the other person hears is a verdict.
Do it in the right order and something shifts. People stop bracing for meetings. They stop gossiping. They stop hiding problems. They start solving them. Defensiveness drops, and defensiveness is expensive.
Listen to this full episode of the How People Work Podcast with Shane Jacob.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the How People Work Podcast. That's right, we finally have a new name that makes total sense. I think it's really cute. How People Work, kind of a double meaning there. Yeah, excited about the new name. And outside of that, business as usual, you know, it's pretty warm. It's July in Las Vegas, Nevada.
And there's no trouble trying to stay warm this time of year here, so I'm glad to be inside for a few minutes to record this, and and we got a really exciting and important discussion today about implementing The Worth Work system. So, with a real example that happened just yesterday. And again, here's why it matters. What what matters?
First of all, let just let me tell you this, all right? If you're a leader in any scope, and I mean in any scope, if you're a leader, particularly if you're leading employees, employ leading a team, if you're a manager in any scope, if you're part of a company as a supervisor or anything, okay, if you work with other people, if you're in a family.
If you consider yourself a leader, you are a leader. But if you consider yourself a leader and you're interested in improving your leadership and improving the results that you get with people and in your organization, here's the deal: it's a good thing you're here, because I can save you so much time. I mean, so much time. Because here's the thing, I've been doing this for quite a long time.
And I've done, I've made all the mistakes, I think. Maybe not all of them, but damn near all of them. And I've practiced a bunch of them to know for sure that they don't work. I've done some of them for a long, long time. And and so, if you want to excel and if you want to move to the top sooner than later, not spin your wheels and waste a bunch of time, right? Here's where you need to be, because I'm gonna give you some of the keys that are gonna shoot you, when I finally figured that some of these concepts.
The foundation, the belief system that it took to change the behavior, to change the way things roll in my own life and then with other people, that's when the magic happens. Okay. Now, you don't have to go about this and take, have it take decades like I did. You can just be right here with me, take in what you can, participate, contact me, and be a part of what we got going on here, and you'll shoot past all.
You know, you won't waste your time and spin your wheels and and have all the negative results that I have practiced and done so much. You could be able to do a lot less than that, because I've done things wrong for a long time. That way, it's, that's what makes me specializes me, qualifies me in helping you do things right. Straight up.
Today's, today's about implementation, how it works, what it looks like in one aspect, just one piece of The Worth Work system, and I wanna review why it's important in the first place. And that is this: as we implement The Worth Work system, people feel they trust that they're safe from value judgment in the the workplace, okay?
That changes how they feel. Now, we can't control how people feel. The only people that we can control how we feel sometimes is ourselves, if we change our thoughts. Okay, but we cannot control how other people feel, but we can influence what they think, because the way that we show up, the way that we relate to them, the way that we present has a tremendous influence on other people's thinking, therefore how they feel.
Therefore their actions, therefore their results. Okay. So we can, the the, we can influence what they think about us, what they think about their workplace, what they think about, they'll, their culture, the culture here, the company, their coworkers, and just how we roll around here. We have tremendous influence on how people think about that.
And therefore how they feel, act, and the results that we get. So as we, as people begin to trust us, what happens with this psychological safety? And again, I keep using that term, but what it means is, well, I haven't used it, kept using it today, but what I mean when I say that is that that people feel they trust that they're safe.
From their value or their worth being judged. In other words, they don't think that you're gonna think they're a certain kind of way, or a certain kind of a person, because they did a certain thing that might not have been the greatest thing. Okay. What happens in the workplace is that as people begin to trust you, okay, begin to trust their culture.
Trust their company, trust their leader, trust their coworkers in this unit that we're building, the fear goes down, because fear is what's driving a lot, almost all of this behavior that we don't want to have happen. People start to feel value instead of devalued, and then what happens then is they become more productive and they become more effective. Now, there is enormous fear.
Wrapped up in work, in the workplace, in people's career, because the stakes are so high. It's your money, it's your mortgage, and it's your kids' food, it's your kids' future. Okay. And so the stakes are high, so therefore the fear is high. And so when I come into the workplace, when I show up in an online meeting, or I come through the doors to work that day, the stakes are high, and
I'm very cautious about how everything, my perception of how people perceive me, and how I'm perceived in that, what, how I think people think about me. It's a big thing. Okay. Because we're so concerned, and so we're worried about everything, you know, because, like I said, the stakes are high. There's a tremendous amount of fear wrapped up in this. And as the trust, as we can build influence people for them to feel trust, then as the trust goes up, the fear goes down.
And the results that we're looking for as leaders, we have high performing people, we have high achievers, we have people that actually, that change how they behave. And it's pretty amazing to be able to see that, particularly if you have been through long periods of frustration and anger and don't think it'll change, and you've been blaming everybody and everything in the whole world about why everything sucks with human beings that you need to manage. And really.
Like I said, you can't change people, but you can change how you influence people, and therefore change the result that you're getting back. There's three assumptions that you must hold. Now, I talk a lot about these in the system, but there's three assumptions that you must have before you implement it. And this is not something that you go and get, and you say, okay, I got these assumptions and I have these belief systems now, because the WorthWork system is not like, okay, you know.
Check this off the list, check this off the list, check this off the list, now I'm done with the system, where's my big fat results? It doesn't exact work exactly like that. It works more like, is, I commit to developing beliefs inside myself. Okay. And as I change how I think and how I believe, then I start to implement the system with people.
And as what is inside of me comes out, as I relate to other people, as I interact with other people, as I'm changing, you start to see the changing results, and that's how it rolls. Now, this can happen pretty quick. This isn't, you know, something that you have to wait for results for an eternity to get. You can, if you can change how you think, you can start changing the results that you're getting pretty quick. But there's three things I talk about, this isn't, I'm just gonna go over the three.
Basic concepts that you must have. I'm gonna assume that you already have these, and we'll talk more about these in the future. I've talked about some of them. This probably won't be the first time that you've heard of these ideas, if you've listened to this podcast before. Number one is the value, what I call the value foundation. Okay, so what I, and that is the first one of the four pieces, elements, in the WorthWork system. The value foundation is means.
That we believe, that you believe, that I believe, that every human being is one hundred, that is invaluable, okay, is 100% valuable and 100% equal. That I don't think, and that you don't think, that you're any more, any better, or any less than anyone else. Everyone is perfectly equal and has perfect worth, has perfect value.
Okay, 100%, not 99, not 101, 100% valuable. Everybody. Nobody's worth more or less than anybody else. Okay, no matter what they've done. And that has to start with how I see myself. So important. I need to be able to look at myself and say, can I honestly look at myself and say to myself that I am 100% valuable? Can I say that? I am 100% valuable. I am as equal to,
But not better than, anyone who has ever been and or ever will, or is currently on the earth. Period, end of story. Do I believe that? And that's a belief that we can continue to cultivate and build, and that we can internalize and develop, and as we do, then that comes out. But that needs to be number one, that we see people as one, as equally perfect. Okay. Their value, not what they do, their value.
Assumption two is what I call the separation skill. Okay, what the hell's that, Shane? Separation skill means that we intentionally separate what people do from who they are, from what they are, from the kind of person they are. We separate value and worth and behavior. We separate that, that's the separation skill. And we say that behavior.
The belief is that behavior, what people do or don't do, has, can have, no effect on a human being's value, on their worth as a person. What they do has no impact on that. Okay. That means nothing that you, or any other, again, this be, this begins with you. Okay. I'm gonna come back to that. But nothing a person can do can change their value, okay, the value of their soul. Nothing.
Period. Of all the things that people can do, and people can do some stuff, if you know what I'm talking about, I've done some stuff, but of about all the people, the things that people can do, that value has no impact on worth. Okay. This is a big belief system, and it can be a shift, or it can be a new thing, or a hard to accept. You have to want to. You have to accept the idea. And I, I advocate for this belief. I,
It's easy to argue. Sometimes people say, well, you know, if you've done this, then you're this. I mean, how can you say, Shane, that people do all these horrible, horrendous things to each other, are, you know, have the same value as as this? And what I say is, is, I say a lot of things, but one of the things I say is that everybody comes into this world as a baby, perfectly 100% valuable, and what they do doesn't change their worth.
Before God, or before themselves, or before each other, unless we deem it to be so. And I don't believe it's for us. I don't think it's our decision. I mean, we do it unintentionally all day long. We're just taught to do that. I'll talk more about that here in a moment. But I don't think it's for us. I think that we live better lives and we have better results in our lifetime if we choose to believe that no matter what people do, it doesn't affect their worth. Now, that doesn't absolve,
That doesn't make anything right. It doesn't make anything okay. It doesn't absolve anybody from responsibility. People are accountable for what we do, and what we do matters. It matters tremendously. I mean, that's why we're here, to do what we're gonna do, or not do what we're gonna do.
I have to believe that about myself if I'm gonna believe that about other people. Now, if I've got shame, okay, I'm, I've got to resolve my own shame. I've gonna need to work towards shame resilience and resolve the shame that I have, okay, and work towards becoming what Brene Brown calls shame resilient, okay, which means that we all experience shame, and when we do.
We know how to process it and let it go and not hold on to it. So let's talk, let's define what shame is. My definition says that shame means that because we did something that we judge, or we value to be wrong, that we are devalued, or we are wrong. I did something wrong, something is wrong with me, that's what shame means. And we're saying, no deal.
You did something wrong, that's because you're a human being, not because something's wrong with you. Because you're, that's what human beings do. Sometimes they do things like that they regret, that they wish they wouldn't have. And the more that we hold on to that and make it mean something negative about ourselves, the worse, we're more likely to repeat it, and we're more likely to have negative impact on our life. We will. It's a flat fact. We're not more likely to, it's gonna happen.
We're also gonna have a negative impact on other human beings, the people that we care about the most, as a result of holding on to that shame. I'm talking about letting it go, more about that. We're not talking all about shame today, but the separate, but in order for you to fully internalize the belief that behavior has no impact on your own value, you must process shame. You must, it must become to be okay, become to be, I don't know if that's the right, that's, doesn't sound right, but,
You must come to believe that no matter what you have done, nothing that you have done has affected your value as a human being, and that it's okay that you did that. It's not, it's not okay. It's not a good idea that you did the thing, if you wish you wouldn't have. That's not what I'm saying. It's okay to your value. Nothing touched or scratched your value. You can go back and fix it, make amends, do everything you can to not repeat it, if that's what you want to do in your lifetime, and you're more likely to do so if you take a look at that and say, I,
The reason that happened is not because that I'm defective, it's because I'm a human being. More on that to come. So behavior has complic, consequences, but what we, what it can't do is damage a human being's worth. Okay. So that's separating what we do, behavior, from who we are, our worth, or our value as human beings. Assumption three,
Is the principle, the WorthWork principle, which means we judge the work and we protect the person. We critique the work because we must. I mean, that's why we're here. We're here to judge the work and improve the work and have consequences about the work. The work can also be called, in the work, in the workplace, we call it judge the work, you can also say judge the behavior, but always protect the person. Protect the person meaning,
Never devalue a human being based on what they do or don't do. We always protect the person's value. Those are the three main concept. If you've got those, you don't have to have them perfect. They're never going to be perfect for as long as you live. And if you see in this example, you're going to, this is my example, you're going to see that I don't have perfect implementation all day, every day. But what you'll see is that I work to implement the system, and as I do, my results get better and better.
And I have faster response times, and it takes me less time to get the a better result, and that's what I want for you: better results in less time. And here's how we roll with this. Here's my example.
Okay, so we're gonna call this person Larry, even though that's not their name, and we'll say that Larry works here. Now, I have had a couple guys work here named Larry, but that's, I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about something that happened yesterday, and right now we don't have anybody the name Larry that works here, meaning my horse feed company here in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jacob Livestock. So I get a call from Larry.
He works in the hay yard, he works for Jacob Livestock.
That's not true, that's not what happened. I call Larry, that's the first thing that happened. And we had an incoming delivery of hay cubes, and there was an incoming delivery, and I needed to know how much, the how much it cost, how much the cost of, I needed to know the the amount on the bill and lading so I could get payment ready so we'd be all set. So I call Larry on the phone yesterday, now I said, hey, hey, Larry.
Can you get the bill of lading from the driver and call me back with the total so I can get the payment ready for the driver? So, sure, yeah, everything's good. So we hang up and end the call. And before, a few minutes later, my phone's ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. So I pick my phone up and I swipe it to answer, and I put it up to my ear, before I could even say hello,
I hear "71.50" in my ear. Now, I paused. There were some thoughts going through my mind when that happened. Okay. And I didn't say anything, I just paused for about two or three seconds, and then I said, "Hello," kind of like that. And he said, "Can't you hear me?" And I said,
"Yes, I hear you." And he said, "It's 71.50." And I said, "Okay." And I ended the call. Now, let me tell you what's going on inside my mind. Okay.
As soon as I picked up that phone and I swiped it to answer and I put it up to my ear and I heard "it's 71.50," immediately, with no thought, my total reaction was, why did you just do that? That's rude as hell. What is the matter with you? How many times have we gone through phone etiquette, of how we treat each other on a phone, how we treat each other with customers? You are rude, you are,
I don't know what, you are rude, that is wrong, what is the matter with you, can't you remember anything, what is the problem, you know. Every one of those thoughts was a negative value judgment about Larry based on his behavior. Everything that it happened like that. Okay. As soon as I heard that, as a matter of fact, when I said hello, after he said 71.50, I said hello.
And I was kind of, in my mind, I thought, well, maybe he'll realize that I didn't say hello before he started talking in my ear, but he didn't. He just said, "Well, can you hear me? It's 71.50." Now, why is this a big deal, and why did I automatically have all these thoughts? Well, a little bit of backstory is, is that, that's not the way we roll here in my company. What we do,
With each other, and especially with customers, but even with each other, we always, when when we're making the call, we wait for the recipient of the call to acknowledge that they're there and ready to hear what we called for before we start talking. For example, in my case, he, we would, want the way that I want,
Our company to operate is that when he calls me, he waits for me to acknowledge that I'm there and ready to hear him, by saying something like, "hello," or "I'm here," or "hello." I mean, that's the common response that most of us use here. We say hello to answer the phone, meaning I'm here and ready to hear this, rather than somebody's about to say something, and then somebody on the other end starts talking in their ear.
A lot of times people can interpret that as rude, as disrespectful, and I did too, I do too. When people don't give me a chance to acknowledge, I can make that mean that, you know, that it's disrespectful. Now, is it? Did they mean that? Probably not, who knows. I just don't wanna, that's not the way we roll, that's not the way that we do things, because I don't want to take the chance that we're offending each other or our customers. So now.
Why is all this little story important? Okay. After 30 plus years of screwing up and having horrible results, I haven't had horrible results every day for 30 years, well, I'm telling you, I have done so many things wrong in managing people, that this is a good example of it. I have done a lot of bad behavior and trying to manage and figure things out, and how people work.
How people work, that's why we got this podcast, that. I can guarantee you this: I know from experience, and you do too, that if he fears, if he hears my frustration, one of two bad results is gonna happen. He's gonna have non-decompliance, he's gonna be defensiveness, or he's just gonna kind of be, "yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh," a yes man who who agrees to everything and he doesn't change anything, because in the back of his mind he's got some negative thoughts of his own rolling around. So, I ended the call before.
I had any frustration, you know, sneak out, I'm pretty sure. And so the first thing that I did is, first of all, even in the call, in the short few moments that happened, I recognized that I was frustrated. Okay. Now, I didn't, that took a few seconds, because I just fired right back, "hello, hello," more, it sounded more like "hello, hello."
And,
Then, you know, he's like, "well, can't you hear me?" And I said, "yes." And then he said it again, and I said, "okay, thanks," end·      Â
So what am I gonna do with this? First of all, I was glad that I didn't, that I ended the call and had a time, time to, that's the first thing, because I recognized that I was angry, so I thanked him and ended the call. That's number one, is recognize when your, when your emotions change, when you feel the frustration, when you feel the anger, when you feel the disappointment. Step one is to recognize, I'm gonna go through these steps because they're important. The first thing to do is to recognize, okay?
You must have the awareness if you're going to do anything. If you don't recognize the frustration in yourself, nothing else in the system is going to work. And I could feel myself getting angry in the call, not crazy angry, but but angry enough that that it could be that he, it would, he would recognize it, most likely. Okay, I'm sure he would. A lot of times we think, "I'm hiding it, I was blight, I didn't say anything, that was terribly rude," but you know, your feelings inside of you, they're coming out.
That you think you're hiding them, but we're not. I'm telling you, they're coming out. People know what's in your heart and soul. I learned that, you know, first of all, with horses, because I mean, hell, there ain't no secrets in the barn, you know what I'm saying? You come into the barn, good luck holding on to that, they know what you're thinking before you even get there. You know, as soon as you enter the property, they're like, "hey, something's wrong with him." Horses. And people, a lot of times they're not quite as perceptive as horses, because it, horses, it's their nature.
Live and survive and protect themselves, they have to be super hyper focused on everything, you know, and all the unsaid things that happen around them. But you know what? People are way more perceptive than we think they are. They know what's going on. Our tone, our this, our that, the way that all the other ways that we communicate besides our choice of words, they're coming out.
And people know what the hell we're talking, they know what's going on inside of us. We can't hide it. So I, I recognize my frustration. Okay. I ended the call. Now,
Then the, what I was, what I was actually set up, and I recognize my thoughts too. "You rude, that was you rude," blank, you know, "what the hell's the matter with you, how many times have we been through this, you are this, you are that." Okay, all of those are what are called negative value judgments. Okay. That's what's rolling around in the back of my head. Now, how's this gonna go? It's not gonna go well. Okay. What I was actually frustrated about is that Larry didn't follow our protocol.
And I felt a little bit disrespected and disregarded. Okay. And that's the way that, not just because of that specific call, but because of his training and his lack, he just didn't do it, you know, and he, we've been through, he's been taught and trained and asked and requested and and agreed on that, that that's not why we do things, but then he still did it. So I identified my automatic thoughts, you know.
"You don't care about anything," or "you don't pay attention," you know, all these things that are not factual, they're just not, my, they're just my value judgments, okay? "You're rude, you don't care, you don't pay attention," all those are what are called negative value judgments. Those are not factual. Those are my, me and my mind, placing negative value on Larry based on the, what his, what he did, his behavior. The problem that I had was the way that, the way that the call was handled.
Not Larry. My problem is with the behavior, that I picked up the phone before I had a chance to say anything, he's talking in my ear pretty loud, that was the problem, not Larry. Larry's not the problem. As a matter of fact, that a lot of people in a lot of circumstances, and maybe even me in a different circumstance, wouldn't even, I mean, is it really that big of a deal? Does that mean Larry's a certain way? Is he really totally a messed up idiot because of the way that he handled that call? I don't think so.
But according to me, in that moment, that's what was happening in my thought process.
Now, a lot of times people were taught, and a lot of times people train, promote the idea of "assume good intent." Well, I'm upset right now, but I'm gonna assume good intent, and let me just tell you something about good intent. I believe in assuming good intent, by the way, but I'm here to tell you that about this, this about that, excuse me. Assuming good intent is not enough, okay, it's not gonna be enough. The the separation of,
What they did and their value as a person can't be conditioned on what the intent was. Okay, what do I mean by that? What I mean is, it doesn't matter what the intent is. Let's just say that Larry had ill intent, that he did it on purpose, he just had a, a, he just wanted to,
Upset me because he's quitting later that day, and he wanted to get a dig in, or he wanted to be offensive, or who knows what his intent would be. Let's just say that his intent was not what I would judge to be good intent. Does that matter? Doesn't matter. Remember, behavior, regardless, it doesn't matter why or what, no matter what, no matter what people do or don't do, has no effect on their value or their worth as a person. So therefore the intent, irrelevant.
Okay, so that's why assuming good intent is not enough, because it doesn't matter. The consequence matters, that's the work, or the behavior, not the person, not Larry. Okay. The separation, or the non-judgment of the human being, can't be conditioned on intent. Very important concept there. So even if he still did it on purpose,
That wouldn't change his worth or his value, right? Doesn't mean anything about him. It just means that he did something on purpose. Well.
Step three. So quick recap: I've recognized that I'm feeling frustrated, or angry, or disappointed. I'm recognizing, I'm changing, how, something just changed, of why I feel, what changed my thoughts. So now I recognize my thoughts. What are my thoughts? My thoughts are that I'm, I'm, I'm putting this negative, I'm having these negative value thought judgments about Larry, and I saw that. Then I say to myself, wait a minute.
I do the separation skill. Okay. And I say, I'm, what am I actually upset here? And I separate the work, I separate the behavior from Larry. Okay. And now I can see that the problem that I have here is the way that the call is handled, it's not Larry personally. Okay. That's the separation skill. Then the next step, step three.
In the thought process is that, well, the principle is called "judge the work, protect the person," but actually, in application, you do it, you protect the person first. Okay, then we judge the work. Step three is to protect the person. So what does that mean? How do we protect the person in your own mind? The principle, like I said, is judge the work, protect the person, but when we apply it, the the step three is to protect.
That's the mental order, okay, is to protect the person first in your own mind before you, before you go and address the work. I know because I used to address the work thinking I was protecting the person, but it works so much better, it really doesn't work well doing it that way. You need to protect the person, which means, I come back to the value foundation, okay, and I remind myself that, hey,
Larry is a hundred percent human being, he's a hundred percent valuable, just like me, just like you, no different, no less, no more, he is a hundred percent valuable. And he did what he did is separate from that, I'm just talking about Larry. He did something, whatever, how much, I've done something, you've done something, we do things all day long that are imperfect.
Right, for a myriad of reasons why, doesn't even matter. Okay. So I come back and, I step three, is in my mind I'm gonna protect Larry, I'm gonna protect his person, I'm not gonna make this personal about him, I'm only gonna look at the work. Now I've had these three little steps, one, two, three, three little steps in my mind, and now it's time.
Once I actually believe that, okay, once I've gone through my little thought process, I know I'm ready to talk to Larry, because he will feel how I show up. Okay, before I even say a word, he's probably gonna know what this is about. Now, I've talked a lot about this process and how, and this one phone call that took only a few seconds, but I want you to know that the entire
Internal process takes, took me about 30 seconds, okay, to recognize what am I thinking? Why am I, what am I feeling first? What am I thinking?
Do I want to think this? And then I start to, I do my separation, I do my value judgment on step three, which is I'm gonna protect Larry. He's a hundred percent, I'm, he's, I'm no better than him, he's no better than me, and I'm gonna take care of Larry. This is not personal, it's only about what he did. That whole process took me about 30 seconds, and eventually you can get where it's gonna take you like 10, 15 seconds, okay? And then I'm ready for the conversation with Larry. So
I called Larry back and I asked him to meet me in the barn for five minutes. Okay. And when I got there, I prefaced the conversation, I said, "hey, Larry, just know, remember, this isn't about you, this isn't personal, this is just about how we do things here, and there's one thing about that I need you to change." Okay. And then I explained to him again that we let the person,
Acknowledge that they're there on the line, but we, before we start talking, okay, especially with customers, but with everybody here. And with a customer, it would actually be a disciplinary issue, okay, because we're that serious about how we treat other people for our customers. Okay. So when it's delivered, when that conversation comes to him,
With high respect and high regard and no anger and no malice and no manipulation and no dishonesty and no "I'm trying to trick you."
He doesn't need to get offensive. Okay. And if it's the first time, people are kind of confused, and it'll take him a little while, if they're used to, if they're not used to hearing this kind of a conversation, or if you have a habit of letting people see your frustration, which I've done plenty of, or see your anger, it's gonna take them a while before the trust goes up. You know, you can't flip the switch with people's trust, but you start treating them like, well, first of all, if you believe in yourself,
That you have perfect worth regardless of what you do, and that you believe inside yourself that no matter what you've done, it doesn't negatively affect your value as a human being, you can, all, you automatically start looking at people in the same way, and that helps. It's required actually. Then we start going, applying the system, by going through these little steps, these little thought processes, one, two, three. I can do it in 30 seconds, whatever, take a whole minute if you want.
Go through that, and then go out and have the conversation, or go into the conversation, however you go into it. We can objectively look at what needs to change, because we're gonna constantly be needing to look to improve what's happening. But people don't want to change and improve what's happening, they just want to know that they're doing a good job. But you know what they really want to know? Not necessarily that they're doing a good job, they want to know that their value is solid.
That you don't devalue them based on, no matter what they did, that that they're, that you respect and regard them regardless of what they do. Okay. And that doing things wrong is going to be kind of, we're going to need to normalize that. That's the way it rolls. You see them the way that you see yourself. And that is that you sometimes do things wrong. But together, we're going to look at work, we're going to,
Only look at, the judge, only judge the work, okay, openly, and we're gonna work to improve the work, and it doesn't have anything to do with your, with you being something, being wrong with you, okay, and there, and, like I said, the reason is because there's so much fear, because the stakes are so high, of why this matters so much at work. Okay. The reason this works is what changes is the culture, but I mean, what is culture?
I mean, you need to say something, put it on the wall. People need to know what you consider your culture is, but really what the culture is, is the way that the people in the group think, okay. And as you start to change the way that you think and believe as the leader, and you start showing up and relating to other people that way, plus you promote your ideas, okay, on the wall, and in conversation, and the way that we roll around here, and in all your policy, and this and that and the other, then if everybody starts to operate,
On similar value systems and similar beliefs, and we all start to internalize these ideas that I'm providing for you in this system, that is what changes culture. And that is when the magic starts happening in a group. I mean, you're gonna talk about major cooperation, major collaboration, major effectiveness, and major people showing up with a badass attitude, showing up ready to get some stuff done.
Loyalty, appreciation and honesty. When when we as leaders, when we stop judging the purpose, the the the people, when we start putting, stop, do less or no negative value judgments on people, I don't know if we can do, never do any, but as we do less, people start bracing for meetings, they start, and they they become more self-reliant.
They don't need as much personal management, you know. They have, they have less conflict with each other, less gossip, because as they start to change and think and believe with you in these ideas, that's when the cult, that's when the culture changes. Okay. The sign on the wall doesn't change it. Peep, what people think is what changes the culture. And as the belief changes across the team.
And throughout the company, that's when higher productivity, more engagement, fewer fights, less defensiveness. And moves, we know, defensive is expensive, right? When people feel like it's okay to screw up here, it's okay, because we just fix it, we look at the work and we fix it and we move on, we don't make it mean something about you. Okay, that's when we start to get soup, that's when things start changing in a big time positive way.
The the math on the time for implementation, today I've talked a lotabout it, broken it down to each little detail, and each little thought, andeach little this. From the moment I got off the call with Larry, okay, for meto to go through the internal system of thinking this through, one, two, three,okay, recognize, separate, protect the person, okay, it took me less than aminute, okay.
The in-person meeting, because I did it in person, it added about 15minutes. I mean, me getting there and me getting back and talking to him for acouple minutes about it, the whole thing was roughly around 16 minutes. Okay. Aphone call version probably would have been, I don't know, under six minutesfor sure. So implementation takes a little bit of time in the front, but asthis becomes a habit,
The in-person meeting, because I did it in person, it added about 15 minutes. I mean, me getting there and me getting back and talking to him for a couple minutes about it, the whole thing was roughly around 16 minutes. Okay. A phone call version probably would have been, I don't know, under six minutes for sure. So implementation takes a little bit of time in the front, but as this becomes a habit,
As we become familiar, and as we internalize these ideas and these beliefs, as we develop these in beliefs inside of ourselves, implementation gets faster as it becomes a habit, and I will guarantee it, it's, no matter how long it takes, it is time well spent, because I can assure you, doing things where the normal way, and the the normal way we are normalized, it is a hunt, this is totally opposite,
Of normal thinking, of the way human beings think. We automatically, just like I did, we do this all day long. Everyone, I don't think there might be exceptions, but I don't know who they are. Everybody I've ever talked to automatically has value judgment assumptions that are reactions that happen immediately all the time. The question is, is what are we going to do with them?
And as we change what we do with them, and as we change our belief system, we have less of those immediate reactions, and we have less, a shorter response time, and we can implement the system faster, and then we're operating on a whole new level. Okay.
It's time well spent, that's what I can tell you. However long it takes, it's time well spent, and it doesn't take that long. Listen, my friends, I appreciate you being here with me today. Remember, you are 100% valuable, your value is non-negotiable. See you next week.
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Leadership is not just about what you say during a difficult conversation. It starts with what you believe about the person before you ever address the problem. In this episode, Shane Jacob explains how The Worth Work System helps leaders correct employee behavior without damaging trust. Through the process of recognizing your own reactions, separating behavior from human value, and protecting the person before judging the work, leaders can create stronger accountability, better communication, and a workplace where people are more willing to improve. Learn why separating a person’s actions from their worth is one of the most important skills for managers, business owners, and anyone responsible for leading people.
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