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Dennis Collins: Welcome to another episode of Connect & Convert, the sales accelerator podcast where small business owners tune in every week to hear insider secrets about how to grow their business faster than ever. And we have a treat for our listeners today, Leah. We have some real insider secrets from a real expert. I’m always delighted when we can have a guest of this caliber. But first, Leah, hi, how are you?

Leah Bumphrey: I am good. Good to see you. And yes, faster, stronger. There’s no end to the directions and what we’re going to be doing with this podcast. I’m really excited.

Dennis Collins: This is one of those topics that we’d love to go on for days, but unfortunately we won’t. But we’ll try to get the highlights for you and get your appetite whetted in the proper manner. And we’ll do that in just a second. But Leah, you always start us off with the most lovely introduction and the free offer that we make to all of our listeners, all of our viewers. Would you mind starting us off today with your offer?

Leah Bumphrey: Absolutely. It is, as you say, our free offer. It doesn’t matter US dollars, Canadian dollars. We take them all. Big zero price tag. And what it is, is Dennis, you and I do this for love of small business. We’ve worked with countless small businesses through our careers. And we love being able to help them hone in on questions or look at things a little bit differently. And sometimes with our podcast, we don’t get exactly where they want to go or it inspires them to think, “Hmm, what else is possible?”

So we encourage people to give us a shout via email. You can reach us at denniscollins@wizardofads.com or leahbumphrey@wizardofads.com. Send a request and we will schedule a 60-minute no-charge Zoom meeting where we can talk about what you would like to talk about. It could be recruiting. It could be what’s going on in the world that’s affecting your business. It could be something really, really specific.

Dennis Collins: It could be about leadership. It could be about today’s stuff. It could be about leadership. You never know.

Leah Bumphrey: All kinds of stuff. But we love doing that.

Dennis Collins: How much does this cost, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, you know, Dennis, I love when you ask me that. It is completely, completely free. Now, we do have a lot of our listeners that will get a hold of us and will be talking to us with specific questions. And that’s fine, too. We love that. But if you want to dig deep and find out what’s possible. And a lot of times it ends up that there’s more that we can do. And that’s what you and I love. It’s coaching small businesses. It’s inspiring it. So away you go. Give us a call.

Dennis Collins: Give us a call.

Leah Bumphrey: But first, listen to this one because you guys are going to love it.

Dennis Collins: Yeah, this is great. So today, we always try to bring you the latest, the greatest, the most interesting topics. We have a special sneak peek and some real insider information from a gentleman who is an employee retention and leadership expert with decades of experience helping businesses create extraordinary workplaces. Today, he’s going to reveal some advanced insider information from his soon to be released book.

Our guest today on Connect & Convert is Philip B. Wilson, president, general counsel of LRI Consulting Services, the nation’s leading full service labor and employee relationship building consulting firm for over 47 years. Phil is an author. He’s a frequent speaker on employee relations topics. He is an employee retention and leadership expert. He’s written a book called The Approachability Playbook. I remember getting that a few years ago and I devoured it and I mark it up and I put tabs in it because there is more in that little approachability playbook than you can imagine. And now his new book, which we’ll be talking about today, it’ll be released in April of this year, April 1st, as a matter of fact. That’s no joke.

Leah Bumphrey: You got to pay extra to have a release date like that.

Dennis Collins: I think you do. But here’s the title, The Leader Shift Playbook. Let me say that clearly. The Leader Shift, S-H-I-F-T, The Leader Shift Playbook, coming out April 1st, 2025. Phil, thank you for taking the time today. It’s so good to have you with us. I love talking about employee relations and leadership topics with you. It is also one of our favorite topics for our viewers and listeners. So it’s one of those things we could talk all day, but we won’t. We will probably leave the audience wanting more. And when the book comes out, they can know all. So welcome. Again, we’re glad to have you.

Philip B. Wilson: Thanks for having me, Dennis and Leah.

Dennis Collins: Okay, I read the excerpt on your website and you hooked me in with your commentary on your trip to Mount Stupid. Now, I actually thought, Phil, that I had exclusive rights to the top of Mount Stupid. I thought I had, and all of a sudden you’re claiming it.

Philip B. Wilson: I saw your flag up there, Dennis, but I planted my own.

Dennis Collins: Yeah, I was there a bit before you, a few years before you, I think. I did make that trip. It’s comforting to know there are others, even the experts. At any rate, why don’t you describe for our audience, because I think it’s very instructive. Because this starts with your story, and your story leads to discoveries that you made and things that you did to help fix some of the issues. So describe what you mean by Mount Stupid and how it inspired this book.

Philip B. Wilson: Well, if your listeners have ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the basic idea of it is that on a complicated subject, for example, leadership, which is about as complicated as they get, you learn some and then you can easily walk yourself into like, oh, I’m an expert at this. Like, you think you know a whole lot more than you know. And that’s Mount Stupid because you aren’t really appreciating sort of how deep the rabbit hole goes when you have talked yourself into, I’m pretty good at this.

And the story I tell, it’s my own personal leadership journey, but I was going around the country teaching people about leadership, talking about the book that you just mentioned, The Approachability Playbook, when I came to the stark realization that I was a crappy leader of my own team. And the book itself really sort of describes my realization and then some of the work that I did personally and then along with the relationships on my own team to help transform our company. And then I helped the readers understand they can sort of take these same steps, these shifts in your mindset that I made, and hopefully will help them on their journey.

Dennis Collins: Wow. Yeah, I was, I guess not shocked, having known you a little bit, but not shocked at your vulnerability of laying it all out there and saying, “Hey, here’s a guy who teaches this stuff that his own house was not in order.”

Leah Bumphrey: It’s interesting because laying it out there and like once you make the determination, then as someone who is trying to help people, that’s the obvious next step to write a book, to share the journey. But how difficult was it for you to come to terms with that? Like to really recognize it? Was it people poking you? Did you have those moments of, “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, you just don’t get me,” how was that part of it?

Philip B. Wilson: Lots of pokes along the way. The biggest from my editor. So this book was actually written about three times. And so Janet Goldstein is her name, but Janet, she helped me with the Approachability Playbook. She’s a terrific editor. I then made the huge mistake, speaking of Mount Stupid, the huge mistake of writing another book and then just sort of sending it to her and going like, “Hey Janet, like, what do you think?” And her reply was, “I think you should rewrite this.”

Dennis Collins: Oh boy.

Philip B. Wilson: Which I did. And then I sent it to her again and she was like, “Hey Phil, like this is great stuff in here, there’s really good pointers and practical, but I don’t really feel like you’re in here.” She knows enough about my story and knows enough about my own journey. She’s like, “I don’t really see you here.” So I actually took a week sabbatical with the book for the third rewrite, which was where I actually kind of reflected on this journey that I had been on over the last few years and started to think about, okay, like these leadership principles that I’m talking about, where did they transform my own leadership?

And so like the story of being on the top of Mount Stupid, that which happened years before, but that was not in the book. There’s a number of stories with my own team that were not in the book before the third rewrite. And so a lot of the personal details of my story made it in there in the third rewrite. And she finally let me release that to the world after the third rewrite.

Dennis Collins: Wow, that’s quite an evolution. What is it? Our audience, as you know, is a lot of small business owners, people who are just trying to get through the week sometimes. And they think things are going pretty well. They’re meeting payroll. They’re making a little bit of money. Things look pretty good. And all of a sudden, they’re not. So what warning signs, based on your experience, your personal experience, not only in your own business, but in all the thousands of companies you’ve consulted with over the years, what are the warning signs that you may have to make a leadership mindset shift?

Philip B. Wilson: Well, one of the things in our workshops, we do an exercise on what we call the approachability window, but the basic idea of that exercise is you’ve got to give somebody feedback about themselves. And we sort of manufacture the situation, but it’s real life. So like you’re in a room and you have had a quick conversation with somebody where you’re kind of telling them a little bit about yourself, and they’re telling you a little bit about them. And then you’re put into a position where you have to give them some feedback that they don’t know you’re about to give them. And some of that is about, “Here’s some things I think you’re good at, and here’s some things I think you can improve.”

And when we do the debrief of that exercise, Dennis and Leah, what we tell people is like that feeling that you had where your stomach sunk a little bit and you’re like, “How am I going to give this person who I might barely know some potentially tough feedback?” It’s like, if you don’t feel like that very often, you’re not really doing it right. So one way to tell, Dennis, that maybe you’re not doing it right is if all your conversations are comfortable to you. Because you’re probably coasting a little bit. The tougher conversations, the accountability conversations, that’s what leadership feels like. And so if you’re not feeling that way on a pretty regular basis, then you’re not really doing it right.

Dennis Collins: I’d never thought of that. But if it’s too easy, it’s too easy. Something is not right here.

Leah Bumphrey: So what kind of reactions do you get from people? When you’re doing this exercise, I find this fascinating. So if it’s Dennis and I and I am going to be giving him feedback, then is it going to be reciprocated?

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah.

Leah Bumphrey: With the same person?

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah, you both do it. And because it’s in a workshop, it’s relatively simple. So you’re basically commenting on behaviors, like approachability behaviors that you think that based on your interactions during that day that you think that they could improve on, that you think they could work on. And you each give each other feedback. And we even sort of stack the deck, so to speak. You actually use cards, but you give them cards that they’ve already kind of been through and cherry-picked sort of the easy stuff out of. And so you make it where they’re going to pick something that’s going to be a little bit more challenging. And Leah, what happens in the room, as you might expect. First of all, everybody’s kind of like, da-da-da, in the first round where you’re revealing things that you already know about yourself. It’s like no big deal. And then all of a sudden, when you’re like, ooh, I have to have a serious conversation with someone, it gets quieter. Everyone starts trying to figure out, “How am I going to say this?”

And then it’s interesting, but there’s a lot of different strategies. And many of these things come natural, but we don’t want to give people bad news. So we want to make it a little bit easier for them. They’ve already, by the way, just had a conversation with this person where this person has mentioned a couple of things they think they can work on. So it’s real common that you will sort of reflect back on the conversation you just had and sort of bring that forward, which is a great tool for leaders to be able to go like, “Here’s some things that you do great. Here’s some things that you already know are challenges. So here’s something that I’ve noticed, and here’s something I think we should work on.”

But in that exercise, you see little versions of that. It starts off as nervous laughter, but you can quickly see people will laugh to get comfortable. And when they’re giving the feedback, they will deflect a little bit and be like, “Look, this is just kind of my impression. I don’t know each other. We don’t know each other all that great. We’ve just kind of been together in this exercise. But for whatever it’s worth, this is my take,” which makes it a good, comfortable way to give feedback without necessarily hurting the other person. So there’s all these strategies that people employ that are really great things to take out of the room, because the next time you have to have a difficult conversation with someone on your team, you can use those same tactics.

Dennis Collins: Yeah, I’d be interested, Phil, in your experience and how it compares to some of the experiences I’ve had. How many managers, leaders, whatever we call them these days, really, truly know how to perform a difficult conversation successfully, in your experience, without the training?

Philip B. Wilson: Some people are naturally better at it than others, so let’s just start there. Not everybody’s terrible at it. We tend to avoid those conversations, so a big kind of mistake that people make or problem people have is just avoiding the conversation altogether until it’s kind of, now it’s not a molehill anymore, it’s a mountain. But it is not natural for a lot of people, and because of that, you need to come up with sort of some tactics to get them comfortable. And there’s different tools that we teach. One of my sort of magic tricks is this confirm statement. So the confirm statement is if you are talking to somebody and it’s like an emotional issue or it’s an uncomfortable issue for them, you talk to them for a little bit and you listen. And look, every leadership class you’ve ever been to, it’s well, do active listening, ask questions. There’s all these sort of tactics. Most people don’t do it in the moment because they’re a little bit kind of on edge, they’re not exactly sure what to say, they’re nervous. So typically what happens is we just like jump into problem-solving mode, which a lot of times is the worst thing that you can do.

And so what we do is just this little kind of mind trick of we give your brain like a different problem to solve. So the confirm statement is you sound blank because of blank. Do I have that right? And so we make it a rule. You’re not allowed to kind of go any further in the conversation until you have filled in those blanks. And the first blank’s an emotion. You sound angry, you sound frustrated, you sound overwhelmed because of, and then you follow it up with whatever they just told you, a real quick, maybe one sentence summary of the story that they just told. And when you do that, you’re going to listen better because your brain goes from like listening for when can I jump in and drop my knowledge bomb on this person to like you actually are listening for emotions. So like you’re in this whole different frame of mind. So you are listening more carefully. You’re proving that you listened because you’re naming this emotion and you’re naming and explaining what they just said to you. And look, here’s the other magic part of this.

You guys are wizards. The other, like, magic part of this is you can be totally wrong and you’re still fine because they’re going to tell you what the answer is. You can name the wrong emotion. I mean, unless you’re just like completely like in outer space, they’ll tell you what the answer is. What they really care about is like, are you listening? And at the point that you’ve proven like I listened, I cared enough to listen for many situations, the problem’s solved. They just needed to be heard. But in other situations, at that point, they are ready to kind of collaborate on a solution. So that’s an example.

The book, the Leader Shift playbook, a big part of kind of my commitment in that book, and the last book as well, is just as many of these kind of practical tools that a leader can use to kind of just up their game around, your podcast, it’s Connect & Convert. Connect is like leadership. The sum up of that, the model that we teach is literally called the connection model. Like if you connect, all the good things happen. And if you don’t connect, it really doesn’t matter what else you do. You’re not going anywhere. You got to connect first.

Leah Bumphrey: This sounds like a conversation that’s more of a hug than a let’s just rip that bandage off.

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah, I mean, what’s the point of ripping off the Band-Aid, right? If you’re not going to actually connect and try to work together on, where do we go from here? Focusing backwards on the history and like whose fault it is and like there’s nothing to be gained there, right? The key question is like what can we learn from what has happened and like where are we going? What’s next?

Dennis Collins: The thing that hits me is you also have a leadership toolkit that’s available. And I don’t know exactly where I got the copy. I don’t want to say anything if it’s not available out there.

Philip B. Wilson: It comes with the excerpt of the book.

Dennis Collins: Oh, okay. So that’s where I got it then. I got it with the excerpts of the book. So I’m not revealing anything that’s top secret. But I would highly recommend to anyone who’s listening here who we’ve piqued your interest to get that download and look at Phil’s leadership toolkit. You talk about practical everyday applications. One of the biggest problems I’ve had in my world of consulting and running radio stations before that and all the other stuff I’ve done, we all kind of knew what to do, but we didn’t do it. I never could get the action based on the amount of knowledge that we had accumulated. I think you help solve that. I know you did in Approachable Playbook to some extent as well, loaded with practical exercises. But the toolkit’s over the top. Talk a minute about the toolkit and how you devise that, et cetera.

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah, the toolkit is based on the work that we’ve done with leaders over the last decade and a half, is kind of when we started the leadership training part of our work. And so it’s, like you said, it’s a number of practical tools that implement some of these concepts, because you’re right, we know what to do a lot of times, but it’s more the kind of, well, that’s why my last two books are called playbooks. It’s literally, I give you the plays to run so that you don’t have to think about it. And some of the tools are to sort of prepare you for the conversation that you’re about to have.

So you feel comfortable going into the conversation that you kind of know what you’re going to do. Some of the tools are things that you actually fill out during the conversation, but they’re all oriented to being very simple. Each one kind of has one point that it’s trying to get across. And each one sort of relates to some of the fundamentals that we’ve identified over the years as like the critical building blocks for being an approachable leader.

And so that’s what’s in the toolkit. It comes for free with the excerpt of the book. If you go to yourleadership.com, you can just throw your email in there and you’re going to get an excerpt of the book and you can decide whether you think this knucklehead has anything to say to you. And you get the tools as well. And you don’t even have, all the commitment you need is your email address and you can immediately unsubscribe if you want to. You’re still going to get the tools.

Leah Bumphrey: I particularly love that you’re using the analogy of sports because playbook is designed so that, okay, before you’re in the situation, you know a direction that you’re going to have to go. And when you look at professional athletes, when you look at your kids in high school, they have a plan. And that’s basically what a playbook is. It’s something that you can look at enough times, know what it is that you want to do and why. And then if it goes left, well, still, you’re in the middle of something because real life doesn’t take a time out for us. And okay, no, you’re running the meeting. You’re in the meeting. You’re being approached by something. Something’s being thrown at you. So what do you do? I really appreciate that term. I think words are everything.

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah. Well, my sport was debate, but…

Leah Bumphrey: Mine too.

Dennis Collins: Yeah, me too. Let’s have a debate.

Philip B. Wilson: I do like the idea of a playbook. And like you say, Leah, just because you have a playbook doesn’t mean things aren’t going to go crazy, right? And so you may have to call an audible. You may pivot, but having that basic play kind of in advance when you’re getting prepared for whatever conversation or whatever you’re doing, that gives you a solid foundation. And if you have already kind of thought through sort of, it also is going to trigger like, well, I could see this person maybe saying this when I’m in this. You start to anticipate what are some of the things that could change up.

So having the play just increases your comfort level. And most importantly, going back to the beginning where we talked about human nature is you’re going to avoid something that is in any way uncomfortable. That’s the easy button. So having the playbook in some ways gets you at least over that hump. Like, I’m confident enough now that I can do this, that I’m going to go ahead and jump into the game now and I’m going to run the play and we’ll see how it goes. But that’s the other part that’s really important about a playbook is just give you the confidence to get rolling.

Dennis Collins: That’s a great point. You have referred to the four mind shifts. The four mind shifts that are usually required for someone to elevate their leadership. I’m sure the book goes into great detail on those four mind shifts. I’m sure that’s the core of the book. But just tell our audience, what are those four mind shifts? And let me put you on the spot. If you had to choose just one of those mind shifts that would make the most impact on your leadership, which one would that be?

Philip B. Wilson: Well, I’ll answer those in order. So the shifts are – the first one is your belief in your impact. And here I talk about things like the nocebo effect, which most people know the placebo effect, which is like I believe a sugar pill is going to cure me. A lot of times it does. The nocebo effect is the flip side of that. If I tell you about the side effects that you might experience when you take a sugar pill, people actually experience the side effects. And so you as a leader are having an impact whether you believe you are or you’re not. You can be a placebo effect or a nocebo effect. One of those two is happening. So that’s the first shift. The second shift is your belief in yourself. So once you recognize that you’re having an impact, then what are you doing to make sure that you believe that you have the tools and the capacity to be that placebo effect leader? So that’s the second shift. The third shift, and Dennis, to answer your second question, the one that if I could only pick one, it’s your belief in others.

And this chapter, I talk about the hero assumption. This book was originally called The Hero Assumption. My editor also talked me out of that. But the hero assumption is about believing in others. And the lessons in here are so important. It’s, to me, one of the most important things for my own personal leadership journey. And I think it’s really, really important for anyone who’s in leadership. Whether you believe, Henry Ford is kind of credited with this, and I don’t know for sure who said it, but whether you believe you’re going to succeed or fail, you’re right. And the same thing is true about your team. If you think that someone is going to perform well, the research is unbelievable on this, but they will rise to that occasion. And if you believe someone is going to fail, guess what? Your behavior and the way that you talk to them and the way that you just carry yourself around them is going to lead to that behavior as well.

Dennis Collins: It’s not just words, right? It’s actions or lack of actions, et cetera.

Leah Bumphrey: We’re talking about business, but this applies to kids in school too. I remember hearing this very same thing. If you tell teachers, “These guys, their IQ is off the rails,” or you tell them, “There’s a lot of issues here,” that is going to inform what happens with that class and how that…

Philip B. Wilson: So that study is in this chapter of the book. But yes, if you tell teachers that their students will bloom, they bloom. And if you tell them that, “Ah, they’re average,” they stay average. And if you tell them, God forbid, that they’re dumb, and the studies are unbelievable, because what happens is the teacher’s behavior alters. And the crazy thing about those studies, Leah, they told the teachers just certain kids in the room, and they were set up where these were all kids of average IQ. The experiments were set up in a way that there’s a control in the room. Everyone’s scores were similar. And then they said, “This one, this one, this one, and this one, these are academic bloomers. They’re going to bloom this year. And then everyone else just is average.”

Well, the teacher’s behavior just with those students was different. And that behavior actually led to the results going up. And here’s the thing about those studies. IQ is stable, especially in the ages that they were doing these studies in. But the IQ still went up, which is unusual, basically because the leader, which is the teacher, the leader behaved differently around those folks because of the belief that they had about those individuals.

And I tell some other stories about similar studies. But Leah, to your point, this is not a work behavior. This is a life behavior. If you believe your kids are going to fail, you’re about to have some kids that fail. And if you believe your own kids are going to succeed, they will a lot of times, even when you’re kind of like, “I don’t know how this is going to work,” they will rise to the occasion. The way you talk and think about your spouse is the same thing. Your brothers, your sisters, folks in your community. These lessons are not just work-related. There’s a lot of stuff in the book about different sort of life scenarios where these apply as well. So Dennis, this is my favorite, most important shift.

And then the final one, the final shift, the fourth one is your belief in the power of relationships. And so the hero assumption, all of these interrelate with each other, but the power of relationships is basically this point of your superpower as a leader is your connections. You need to believe in the power of relationships and how important it is to connect. And that can be more challenging with some people than others. And so your job, though, is to strengthen those connections.

So those are the four shifts that I talk about in the book. I talk about how I made those shifts personally with folks on my team and how that impacted our relationship, how it impacted the way that they did their work, not just at work, but going back, Leah. I tell a story about Laura, who’s one of the folks on our team, who at the same time that we were kind of asking her to step up and do work that she was uncomfortable with, but we were telling her, making the hero assumption, “Look, we believe you got what it takes to do this, we’re going to help you, but we think you got this,” and she did. But at the same time, she was basically just doing clerical work for an organization that she volunteered with. Over the course of the last few years, she’s risen all the way to the president of that organization, basically because she started to believe in herself in a way that she hadn’t before.

So there’s a lot of stories about sort of how these lessons have applied in my own company. And your listeners are, I think, probably mostly sort of entrepreneurial, smaller businesses. You probably have some larger ones too, but if you are a small business owner and an entrepreneur, the story that I tell is of, I’ve got 13 employees. I talk about the transformation of my own business and my own company using this playbook.

Leah Bumphrey: It’s so energizing because too many times we think things are happening to us, good or bad. Oh, look what’s happening. Look what this possibility. And it’s, we’re this conduit, but no, our energy can actually change the path of our business, of our family, of our health, all of these things. And you tell these stories from such a personal standpoint, you can’t help but feel that, okay, there’s options here and I can do it.

Dennis Collins: I’ve always had folks tell me, once again, it’s what you believe, right? But I don’t want to believe this, but the mind shift change is the hardest change you’ll ever have to make in your life, whether it’s with you and particularly with someone else, because we generally don’t understand the psychology of how people change their minds. We tend to use devices that have been proven not to work and simply act to piss them off as opposed to get the change. So have you got any advice for our small business owners who might be in that? They say, “Yeah, I need a mind shift change. Phil is right on target with these four, particularly with the number two, I think, about believing in your people.” How do you make these mind shift changes that maybe you’ve held for decades?

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah, let’s go back to the hero assumption. You got to make the hero assumption about yourself before you start making it for the folks that are around you, right? You’ve got to believe there is a way down off of Mount Stupid. You have to believe that even though you’ve had trouble with connecting with people in the past and have maybe led with too much of an iron fist, that you can change. Those are the real important work that you have to do really before you start working on anyone else. My own personal version of that was I tell the story in the book. I think the excerpt has this story, but I approached someone on my team to offer a promotion and to basically be like my partner in running the business. And she was like, “I told your dad, we’re a family-owned business.” She’s like, “I told your dad I’d never work for you. He was not able to retire until I was ready to retire because I’m never going to work for you.” And, look, we’re like a small company and we’ve known each other for a long time and I didn’t know she felt that way.

Well, that was a wake-up call. And so I had to do some reflection on my own about like, wow, this was my Mount Stupid moment, right? It’s like, how could I have been so living in the fog about that relationship and about relationships with these people that I’m around all the time that are my team that look, we have worked together and worked well together for a long time, but like I wasn’t seeing the world correctly. And so that was uncomfortable. That was tough. That was definitely a point where I had to reflect on myself, but I also believed I could do it. And I believed that I could make the changes that were necessary to flip that script around and that’s what happened. And so I would just tell anybody, that’s pretty bad. So I don’t know what your shop is like, but it’s probably not much worse than that. And if I can do it, you can do it. That would be my advice to somebody.

Dennis Collins: I can’t wait…

Leah Bumphrey: And the desire has to come in there too, right? Like, sometimes you have owners and they’re not really engaged. You need to want it. And these are the reasons why, and these are the benefits.

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah. I mean, I wasn’t really trusting of my team. I kind of thought I had to do everything. I would send people down rabbit holes that were stuff that was just a shiny object that I happened to run across. And then when they diverted from what they were supposed to be doing to answer my question or whatever, I had already moved on to five shiny objects later. So I was creating a lot of havoc and mayhem in my company. And once I started reflecting on these things, I started recognizing it. Then, it kind of gets pretty easy. You just ask for help, ask your team for advice. How can I stop driving you crazy? And they will tell you. And then if you just start doing that and they start understanding, oh, you really mean it.

Dennis Collins: This is the new Phil.

Philip B. Wilson: And then they notice, oh, he’s actually trying to do it. That will build on itself. So that’s really…

Leah Bumphrey: You suggest doing that in a group setting or individually, one-on-one? Do you have advice when it comes to how to get it going?

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah. I talk about this in the book. I think it’s situational, first of all. I wouldn’t give a blanket advice. But going back to the fourth shift, the foundation is the relationships. And so in my own case, the most important relationship was that relationship with the person who I wanted to basically be running the day-to-day of the company. So I had to get that fixed first. And I worked on that relationship first. And then we started working on the rest of the team. We, at the same time, implemented a process called EOS, which probably many of your listeners are familiar with. It’s Gino Wickman’s book on traction. But we implemented that process, which also gave kind of a structure for us to have a lot of these conversations. But that was our path. And that’s kind of the path that I talked about. But every company is in a different spot and has different people. And so your journey is not going to look exactly like mine. But I do think these fundamental principles sort of will lead you the right direction.

Dennis Collins: You know, we train a lot of salespeople. And one of the first things that I try to teach is “the first sale is always to yourself.” You can’t begin to try to sell someone else on your product or service or whatever it is until you have sold yourself. What you just said sounds an awful lot like that. The first sale is to yourself. You’ve got to get yourself on board. And we always like to challenge our listeners, our small business owners, don’t we, Leah?

We like to issue a weekly challenge. What would be a good weekly challenge based on what Phil has told us? Maybe Phil has one. What would be a challenge that if you could talk to all these small business owners out there, hopefully they’re all listening, and tell them regarding what you’ve learned over your career in leadership and what you’re writing about in the new book, Leader Shift Playbook, what would be a good challenge they could do easily today just based on the information we’ve talked about?

Philip B. Wilson: I’ll go, Leah, unless you…

Leah Bumphrey: No, I want to hear. I have an idea, but I want to hear the master.

Philip B. Wilson: I have two, and then Leah can give you your third. And you can pick out one of these three pieces of homework. The first one, I think, is in the excerpt. It might be at the end of chapter one. I think it’s at the end of the introduction. But the first one, and this is easier, but it’s powerful. And we call it Everyday Leader. It’s the way we kick off our workshops. But think of somebody that’s been an important leader in your life, someone who made the hero assumption about you. Most of the times, people will pick someone who is the first person who believed in them and maybe saw them in a place where they never even really saw themselves. Think of that person.

And once you have that person in mind, if they’re still alive, hopefully they are, if they’re still alive, commit to reach out to them and go, “Hey, I was asked to think of someone that was a really important, influential leader, someone that I looked up to and admired, and I thought of you.” And have that conversation. So that’s number one. If that person’s not alive, find somebody who knew them and have that conversation with them. Just kind of have a chance to kind of remember and share kind of like what this person meant to you and your own personal journey or personal leadership. So that’s number one. So that’s easier.

Number two is harder, but probably higher impact. But think a little bit about my own experience that I just told you about. Who is the person on your team that like if I say I want you to go have a conversation with them about, “I think we could be better connected. I think there’s something in our relationship that I think could improve and I want to do that.” Go have that conversation. Whoever popped into your mind when I first said it, you already know who it is. Go talk to that person and just talk a little bit about, “Hey, look, I’d like to have a better connection. I feel like we’re not as connected as we should be.”

And then to make it easier for them, ask them for advice. “Give me some advice about what can I do to help improve the connection. You’re somebody that I care about. You’re somebody that’s important to me. You’re someone who’s important in this company. I want our connection to be better.” Have that conversation. So that’s like the backup quarterback can do the first play. Starting quarterbacks will do that second play. So Leah, how about you?

Leah Bumphrey: I love it.

Dennis Collins: That’s gold, Phil.

Leah Bumphrey: I loved how you said about asking for feedback from your team. But I think it’s really important to set yourself up to be in a place where you can accept that feedback. And asking the person who’s closest to you in your life, “How am I?” Your spouse, your sister, your dad, someone who knows you and just like, “Be open, tell me how I am, in these situations.”

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah, that’s scary, Leah. That’s scary

Leah Bumphrey: It is very scary because it’s too easy to dismiss someone who doesn’t know you, someone who is, oh, they just don’t like that I have them do this job. And you have to be vulnerable and most vulnerable with the people who love you. And that’s going to be the hardest, but it can have the most impact. I have one more that it’s just people, and you alluded to it when you were talking about the placebo effect, but people, it breaks my heart, but when you tell them to do some self-talk and just say, “I love you” or, “I’m smart,” their own internal reactions or worse, their external reactions tell you where they are. They’re dismissive. They don’t pick something and do it for 30 days. Every morning, tell yourself, look in the mirror and say something. It will change because you can’t help it. Even if you discount it, you will believe it because our mind doesn’t care what you tell it. It believes you.

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah. Your first exercise, I have a crutch for that exercise to lower the temperature level slightly, but you can have that same conversation, which is that we talked about it earlier, but that card exercise, basically you can come up with your own list of behaviors. We have a list of behaviors as well, but you can write down behaviors that are examples of good leadership behaviors. I guarantee if you went into chat GPT and said, “List 25 good leadership behaviors,” and then you can also tell it, “List the opposite of those.” And you can have them choose, “Okay, what are two things that you think I do well? And then what are two things that you think I could do better?” You kind of, you don’t put them in the position. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable. If you put someone in the position, “So tell me how screwed up I am.” People are going to not really want to answer that question, but if you’ve given them answers that you’ve already seen, right? And you’re like, “Okay, out of these, which do you think are things I do well? And which are some things that you think I could do better?”

You’ll at least start the conversation at a different place. Now they might also then add, “By the way, here’s like five other ways you’re screwed up.” That’s fine. But at least you kind of made it easy for them to get that conversation started. So that’s kind of a good crutch for doing that. But it yes, asking people that are close to you, even outside of work, and people like that you can’t fire, and people that you can’t… Yes, my kid is going to give me different feedback, and my spouse is going to give me different feedback. But yeah, that’s a great place to start.

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, Dennis, our listeners, our small business owners are getting more than their money’s worth today.

Dennis Collins: Confident of it, Leah. This has been like a masterclass in how to ramp up your leadership. No matter how good it may be, if you didn’t pick out something from Phil today that could take your leadership from here to here, you weren’t listening. So I advise you to go back and replay the episode. It’ll come to you, right? It’s there.

Leah Bumphrey: I can’t wait to hear the results of some of these challenges, because I know we’re going to get some response, and they did this, and this happened.

Philip B. Wilson: Oh, I would love to hear that too.

Leah Bumphrey: We will let you know.

Dennis Collins: I have to give you a prize for that. And Phil, we could go on, and this has been just totally enjoyable, because this is our topic, our favorite topic, our listeners’ favorite topic, and you just gave us so much inside information about stuff that you know, stuff that you’ve done. I can’t wait to get the full book. I just can’t wait. April 1st, I’ve got it marked out, man. April 1st, I’ve got it marked out. I want to remind everybody that our guest today was Phil Wilson. Phil, as you probably have figured, if you’ve been listening, is an author and a speaker. His new book is called The Leader Shift Playbook. That book will be released on April 1st. If you want an existing book, an excellent book on leadership, The Approachability Playbook is already out there, already in print. I got my copy sitting right back here. I refer to it often because it’s full of chunks of wisdom similar to The Leader Shift. That’s S-H-I-F-T Playbook. What a great time. I wish you nothing but the best with the book. I don’t see any reason this thing isn’t going to take off.

Dennis Collins: And you have spent a large portion of your life helping people to get extraordinary workplaces, and this is certainly going to help make that even more possible. So thank you again for your time. We appreciate you. We appreciate sharing with our audience. Leah, any words of wisdom as we close out today?

Leah Bumphrey: I have another reason to be excited about April coming.

Dennis Collins: Another reason, right? Absolutely. Other than tax day. Well, you guys don’t pay taxes in Canada.

Leah Bumphrey: No. Not this year.

Dennis Collins: Well, when you become our 51st state, we’ll put some taxes.

Philip B. Wilson: Oh, boy.

Dennis Collins: Oh, we could do a whole podcast on that, couldn’t we?

Philip B. Wilson: Yeah.

Dennis Collins: Okay, kids. I think we better quit before we get in too much trouble, we better quit and say that’s all for this episode of Connect & Convert. We’ll see you next time. Join us.

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