10MINMC.Ep.13.V1.AUDIO
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Trey Sheneman: [00:00:00] Great leadership is never about titles, but it is always about trust. Today's episode, we're gonna learn the greatest leadership lesson that Dave Ramsey ever taught me. Let's jump in.
Welcome to 10 Minute Masterclass, your weekly Mic Drop for Business Breakthrough. I'm your host and lead MC Trey Sheneman, and it is my goal each week on 10 Minute Masterclass to help you learn timeless business principles that can apply to today's business problems. The fundamental way we do that is we teach through a framework that I call the core four drivers of growth.
Which is marketing, sales, operations, and leadership. 'cause no matter when I was working for great leaders like Dave Ramsey [00:01:00] or running businesses on my own with, with partners, or even ones that I owned by myself, like what I'm doing right now with Herald, growth for me always stalled when we were, when we had problems that we could not fix inside of those core four drivers, marketing, sales, operations, and leadership.
In today's episode, like we do on the pod, we're gonna dive deeper into one of those core four areas and it's on leadership and we're gonna talk about. The greatest lesson that I learned when I was working for Dave Ramsey inside of Ramsey Solutions. Now, you know, Dave's been around 30 years at this point.
You know, he could be a polarizing, uh, person. He's very straight talk driven, you know, no nonsense. I will, I will happily say that who you think he might be based on your perception of him that you've built from either listening to him on the radio or if you've watched any of his live events, or read any of his books.
That is exactly who he is. He is one of those guys that is 100% authentic no matter the environment. He is just Dave. I actually really, really appreciate the, about that, about him. That's [00:02:00] how I want to be as a leader as well. I have worked for other public figures that I will not name, that are one person on camera and a different person, um, behind camera, and that is.
Not who Dave is. And so that doesn't mean that everybody's gonna love Dave or like, or even like him. Um, but at least you can say he's authentic. And I think that authenticity that I saw Dave model is the driving factor around the lesson that I ultimately learned from him that I'm gonna share with you today because I think it's a leadership lesson that no matter your leading a team of one yourself, or if you're leading a team of 1000 like Dave Ramsey, is that this leadership lesson is transcendent.
It does not matter. And here it is, business moves at the speed of trust period. If people cannot trust you. The second, there's a little chink in your armor as the business leader where people feel like your integrity is in question. I. You're not who they, you're, you are not who they thought you were. Um, it, it is like that thread on the sweater [00:03:00] has been pulled and that thing is just gonna unravel from the bottom.
So trust is the, ultimately curr is the ultimate currency when it comes to leadership. And so without trust, decision making slows down, turnover goes up. People start wasting effort in the wrong directions. Um, but when teams trust their leader, they're gonna move faster. They're gonna take ownership, they're gonna innovate more freely.
And you know, the way I think about it is, is like trust is the, uh, it's the lubricant, it's the oil inside of the gears of a great organization, of a great team that just keeps it running smoothly. So we, we wanna make sure that. Or being leaders that people can trust. So when I think about being leaders that people can trust.
When I think about the way that I saw things emulated for me when I was working inside of Ramsey Solutions, I wanna break it down for you. This way. I want to turn trust into an acronym, and I wanna walk you through the five components of what being a trustworthy, a [00:04:00] trust first kind of leader looks like.
So the first one is the T. She gotta be transparent. There can't be any hidden agendas. People shouldn't have to have any guesswork. Um, you know, one of the things that I loved about Ramsey was how freely, um, information was shared from the top down. So every Monday morning we'd have a staff meeting.
People would get up, get on stage in front of the mic from every department, and just give us updates on like, what's going on, what's working, what's not working, how could we. You know, how could we be praying for them? How could we be chipping in and giving 'em ideas? I had the, I guess you could call it good fortune.
Some people would've been deathly afraid. I actually liked being on stage. Personally, I liked public speaking. I got to do that a lot from my position. I gotta get up there and say, guys, this is where we did well, and this is where I screwed up. I remember we ran a really big campaign, a massive live stream.
We worked on it for months. We ran the live stream. Dave crushed it. He did the pitch. He walks off stage. Goes to go to the airport to fly home and says, Trey, I'm gonna call you when I land back in Nashville and I want an update on how many sales we've done. We had a huge goal, [00:05:00] and about eight minutes after he walked off stage, I got a call from our tech team saying the website had crashed.
Like we had sent so much traffic to the website that it had crashed it. So there was like. 27 or 28 minutes that it was down and we weren't doing any sales like right after this huge pitch. And I had to tell Dave that on his phone when he landed back in Nashville. And then the next, that was on a, like a Thursday, that next Monday I had to go on stage in front of a thousand colleagues and say, guys like I should have tested, we should have tested better.
Like we, it's, it's an awesome problem to have that We broke it, but it also sucked that we broke it because we, we left out on the sales. But the way that. We were able to handle that and be transparent. Like not only did it imbue me to Dave, it, it imbued Dave to me, imbued all the leadership to each other.
And the cool thing was we were able to like resuscitate that campaign and still get to the number by the end of the month that we were going for, but we were over communicating what was wrong and being transparent. And another way that I think you gotta be transparent in order to be a more trustworthy leader is you want to make sure [00:06:00] that you are communicating your vision early and often.
Okay. I don't think you can ever be trans. Uh, overly transparent about where the company's going. So true, so transparent. Number two, relatable. People follow people, they don't follow titles. Um, you know, one of the things that I love, Dave, that he would say to do is make sure you're leading by walking around.
And what he meant by that is like, I had an office. It's like, don't just be sitting over in your office and people come to you like, get out and about, be with the team. Um, you know, work on the whiteboards with the team. Make sure that they, you, you know their name. Make sure you know their kids' names, their kids' birth dates, like little facts.
At, at our time at Ramsey, all of our office doors or our cubes had like our name, our Enneagram score and our disc profile on there. And the whole point of that was so that you could find common ground with people so that you could actually build real relationships with people. And I think one of the best ways that you can lead by walking around, and you can come off relatable, is to make sure when you do fail, like the story that I just shared a minute ago, that you own it.
It's real easy for leaders to stand behind their successes, but, but leaders will run from their [00:07:00] failures. I think you endear yourself more to your team when you embrace your failures and you communicate those things so. Be, be relatable. Number three, be unwavering. Your team needs to know where you stand at all times.
When Covid hit, I remember they called a all company meeting. They sat us all down and Dave told everyone in the company where we were at financially how long we, we could go without making any income in case something really got bad. 'cause of the way Covid was, how, how long it would be before people had to start to take like cuts in pay and so on and so forth.
I mean, just. Unwavering and very bold with everything that we're sharing. Um, you know, this is, this is how you take a strong position. This is how people see your commitment level. Uh, if you shift your stance every time there's resistance in the market or something hard comes up, your team's never gonna trust you to lead.
But when. Things get hard if you step out in boldness. If you show you have an unwavering commitment to your vision, to the mission of the business, man, you wanna talk about being able to be firm in your [00:08:00] values and have people still wanna follow you. It's a great sign of leadership. Number four, you gotta be skillful.
Competence breeds confidence. The best leaders aren't just visionaries. They can actually roll their sleeves up and get it done. You know, in our business, I really still can push the buttons if I wanted to. You know, I could still run some ads. I still write some copy. I still come up with the campaigns. I want my team to know that I still got some skill.
They're not just following me because I started the company, but because I've actually got some skill to bring to the table to deliver here. So when you're in leadership, don't farm out. Every single function inside of your business, like make sure you're figuring out how to stay sharp, so keep learning.
Stay ahead of the curve. And if you want to be able to build a culture of excellence, then you have to demonstrate excellence in your own skills, okay? And number five, you gotta be tactful. Being direct doesn't mean being reckless, though. It doesn't mean being mean. Um, you know, as I said at at the top of the pod, you know, Dave was known for straight talk, but man.
He can handle con tough conversations with such grace, um, whether that was [00:09:00] behind closed doors in the public eye. At the end of the day, people want leaders that have clear abilities to communicate. Um, they're not confusing when they talk, they don't beat around the bush. Um, they're able to deliver feedback in a kind and respectful way.
They're tactful with how they, uh, communicate. They never destroy morale with their words. Really good leaders never destroy morale with their words. They are, they are tactful in every situation. And another good thing that great leaders do who are tactful is they praise publicly and they, they, uh, correct privately.
And so those were things that I saw and, you know, um. Example, as an example for me in my time working under Dave, and because of those, those elements of trust, the ability to be transparent, relatable, unwavering, skillful, and tactful, the business did go faster. It went faster because that was the culture of leadership that was being built there.
As a culture of leadership, I try and carry forward in everything that I'm doing, so I would just encourage you, [00:10:00] which one of those five areas in your leadership, do you need to do some soul searching this week? Do you really need to lean in and say, how can I be. Better at one of these five areas so that my team can feel more supported.
That oil of trust can be the lubricant inside of our business to make us go faster and smoother than ever before, and I hope you will do the soul work that it takes to embody these characteristics yourself. As always, thanks so much for joining us on the pod. We'll see you next time on 10 Minute Masterclass.
See you on the flip side.
