The Hidden Communication Gap That Breaks Great Teams (and How Great Leaders Fix It) Ft. Greg Kaiser

Hey, what's up everybody welcome into vision pros live. I'm your show host Jackson calendar of first class business

And I've got Greg Kaiser in the house of management mastery. He's got a book on management and leadership

He's got a great personality. We have no problem going back and forth with healthy conflict

And that's one of my favorite favorite realities

And I've got a leader who's willing to go in and dive deep on well, I don't know about that

Well, what about this angle and he goes, well, I don't know about that Jackson. What about this thing on that's one of my favorite

styles of conversations because it's obviously diving into both of our blind spots

And I don't think there's a more healthy place that we can be on a weekly basis maybe not every moment of every day

But I like to be there often because I'm trying to lead millions of people and I won't get there unless I'm able to see past my own blind spots

So Greg Kaiser, thank you for being a great guest. Thank you for being a great mastermind buddy through email

We got a penpal stuff going and make sure to talk about hidden communication gaps at break great teams

Jackson, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Really look forward to having another

Let's call it vibrant or possibly vigorous conversation

Yeah, very good good second word choice, too

That's that's what I've felt and sometimes my friends sometimes when I get these emails from Greg my inner ego comes out and is like

Really?

You know and and I'm like wait now he gets it. He's he's not going to run from this. We're going to we're going to talk all right

And I'll put my email back and I'll be like okay

Jackson channel you and her love

Bring up the radical candor and I think so many people hear that book and they've never read it or looked at it

And they think radical candor means like extreme hard bearing truth

That's not what it is my friends radical candor is you love somebody enough to recommend change

That's what it's about and that's what I so I've I've gone back and forth with Greg looking all right what changes can I possibly

Help Greg with not inflict on Greg and when he returns back I'm like cool

I I see that he's doing the same thing so again that you got a you got a special

Aspect of leadership Greg that you don't have to give you didn't have to go through a wrestling matches through email

But you chose to and I just I get I want to thank you for that. Where did you learn that?

Uh

Jackson I'm a honors graduate from the College of Hardinocks many people have never heard of this school

You know, I I'm a

self-proclaimed

Hopefully I can back that up lifetime learner

Yeah, and the way you learn how to do things is through repetition and trial

But then the flip side is you have to be

Humble enough for or have enough humility to step back and say

Oh boy, that didn't work the way I thought

Yeah, instead of saying oh these people they don't get it like no, no, you didn't give it to them

So go back rethink your approach a little bit and help them

And and that's a

That's an iterative process

Yes, it is that's already a masterclass. We're going to wrap up today and just close this episode

Now my friends seriously have your pen and paper ready because I can tell from what Greg already said and from my own life

I'm going to speak for both of us

We have both been through the good the bad and the ugly of leadership

And everything that we talk about today

We're going to be revealing some secrets that took me years to learn that took me that

If I had just had somebody help me see these matters

My relationships would have improved drastically my companies would have scaled far faster with far better culture

And ultimately I would probably be leading millions of people by now because of the people that I was working with

But I had to learn some very hard lessons as a young visionary

That didn't quite understand how to pull these

Pull these aspects together. So we're going to we're going to try to nail down the one major communication gap

After we talk about several of them

But we're also going to dive into some communication gaps that you can fix right now

Greg let's dive into the first aspect of that before we take a little break

Communication gaps that quietly grow grow between leaders managers and team members

And we're going to talk about both in-person work at work forces and environments and online remote work forces because they're very very different in my opinion

I've been

How many years not 16 years working from home and I can tell you there's a lot of good bad and ugly to remote work forces

But Greg let's start with yours back to it one more time

What are the communication gaps that quietly erode or grow between leaders managers and teams

Yeah, so I think about this I like to put things

Into structures frameworks whatever word you want to use

And so the first thing they they miss is are we actually communicating

And the communication is exchange of valuable information as differentiated from say tit chat

You know when you and I email back and forth

It's fairly intense. There's some weighty things in there and you're like, okay, that's information

I'm going to go buy this book that he suggested. I'm going to listen to this one a lot of bullets et cetera et cetera

That's information

And then the other thing people miss and this is so basic what direction is the communication flowing

Are you listening or are you actually sending the communication out

Because and this is the thing I try to help people understand the initiator of a communication

owns the communication from that point forward and they have to feel that

that

Okay, I initiated this communication and I did it presumably on purpose

I now own

Where this goes

Because and you probably experienced this jack do me a favor on this Greg you you I feel like I'm I'm in a pool

And I tried to reach the bottom and I didn't reach it, but I'm like oh, I want to

um

Help me see the example because what you said I can I can feel the depth

But I couldn't quite capture it in a real life scenario

So what does that look like the initiator and the responsibility?

So the initiator put put it in a simple you're in a remote work situation since you brought that up and I personally experienced this

People would talk in generalities on we were using microsoft teams

And I'd say okay hang on

subject verb object

break this down

structure that so

The people that are on here know who you're talking to

What you're talking about and then the object what you want to happen

Because

You know, I I'm fortunate. I get to observe these things fly on the wall

Yeah

Until I learn how these people interact

Then I start inserting myself and say okay, this this might be helpful

And I do this offline jacks. I don't do this on the calls

I call them afterwards and okay, I have transcripts the meeting

Let's go over how you explain this you directed this to somebody in germany and

I took German for five years the language structure in German is different

So you have to understand that

Verbs are super important in German

Sentences hinge around verbs

So

You have to make sure you're not using some American idiom that they don't understand

Because they're going to be embarrassed to stop you in the middle of the meeting with a bunch other people on the call

So confirm

If you say something confirm that they understood

This is the action that we need to flow out of this

Is everybody on the same page

And then you'll let them repeat it back to you and you might have the problem

A little bit you know, you don't have to prompt them a little bit to get them to do that

Um

But once they repeat it back to you then you can very very quickly say hmm

I didn't exactly get across what I wanted to are like okay nailed it good. Let's move on to the next thing

That's and this is harder in a remote environment

Because people

Don't always pay attention as much as they should

Correct right right and especially if you allow videos to be off

But you also you can't see somebody's hands on their lap going like this

Oh, you can't see the leg bouncing

No, but what you see is this

You know they're looking under you know they're looking under the table

I worked with a great guy was it is about a billion dollar company

Wouldn't let a meeting start until everybody's cameras were on and he was nice about it and kind of joky about it

He's like oh, I see you just got out of bed and you're still in your robe and whatever whatever

He only had to do it a couple times people showed up ready to play

Yeah, they knew they were gonna be on camera

And he tiled the screen

And he would just it was like sitting in the meeting room he would randomly go around and say

So John, what do you think?

Hey, you know, are you guys getting this and you point to somebody say their name

So all of a sudden you know when somebody says your name you snap to it

Yeah, he was so good at it, but he he was a natural

Yeah, as I talked to him afterwards, I'm like how did you get that good at that

He's like well, I work for Boston consultant group for 10 years

He's like we're really good at making sure people are paying attention because

They have to pay attention to what we say like okay, we've been practicing for 10 years like you didn't do this yesterday

Right exactly. So there's that combination of a natural with will natural plus 10 years of of extreme exercise

All right, so that's good. That's really good. And I like that you talked about the repeat it back

Greg you said you went to the hard knocks university

Beels a little bit like you went to the the Oxford University as well subject burden object and

Confirm action repeat it back. I'm gonna put that into why we consider layman terms for a sports guys

I once had a therapist who helped me realize just how bad

Communication between human beings are and he had a he had a little bit of game that he played called past the ball

And so when you pass the ball when you're speaking you've got the ball

So we do this virtually in our companies where okay

I've got the ball here's what I'm saying subject verb and object right here's the challenge

Here's what we're gonna do about it and here's what we want the outcome to be all right using Greg's formula

When I finish that I'm going to give the ball to a team member

And I'm saying now it's your turn to tell me what did I say?

Yes, so they have the ball and they speak so you back and they usually say

Something completely different than what I said

And now they give me the ball back

And I say okay, that's what you heard. This is what I meant and then you might have to do this five or six times in my marriage

I said so I think we did 15 the first time. Oh, I was like whoa. We really we're using the same words

But me

Said again slow learner. Oh, yeah, of course

Slow and intense both absolutely. So those that aspect alone. That's a that's a very big one

Let's let's dive a little bit deeper Greg. What's um or into a

Another area of communication gaps. They probably grow all lead on this one. You can color commentate

In remote workforces my friends. I wish remote companies would lean into exactly what I say here. This this was a very hard earned lesson

There's almost no culture in remote

Right work environments because people they don't want to be on meetings

To the meeting feels kind of static because people don't know how to lead remote meetings very well

And so even if you're best friends and we were and my first one of my first startups

We lived all down the street from each other, but we wouldn't see each other

But once a year when we go to a trade show and we were busy. We're working. We all had our own responsibilities to do

And so our zoom calls after that first year like we get to the trade show conference and we're like oh my gosh

I do still love you. I don't hate you

um, you know, and we you know year two coming up on the same thing, but with far more like

I don't know if I still love you. Um, you know, and and by year three

Um, and we we freaking hate each other. We were we were all really mad at each other

And so I went into I went into video power marketing after that a couple years later

And we were remote kind we were remote culture again

And I thought through the nasty experiences that Adam and and Don and Jen and I went through it restaurant connect and I said you know what

It we just we just got to a point where every day was Greg

Did you get it done?

Okay, good. You got it done. Um, all right. You didn't get it done

Man, you there like why don't you get it done and then it just became a transactional relationship where everything

We're doing was so focused on all right, let's get out of this meeting because nobody wants to be here anyway

Like let's let's go and let's get it done

Let's get it done and there was there was no depth. There was no moment where you know what

We're in the somebody yelled at me on the phone and the guy in the cubicle next to me goes

Whoa, man like that was harsh like way to take it

Um, you know, and that that builds a sense of belonging that builds a sense of good feeling that you've got each other's back and moments

Even if it if it's worse being that cubicle

There's something that happens with the values the virtues. So now let's go to what we did at video power

A video power we would take time to talk about the good things in life

We wouldn't just rush off the zoom because everybody hates zoom

You know like don't people hate zoom meetings because they get static and focused on transaction and two

We decided that every time that we had a conference

We would bring everybody to the speaking session everybody would come there for that three day weekend

We would have one day where we were we're doing a seminar where everybody prepared their own little stuff to talk about what we were going to move forward

And the next day

We would all spend time together doing something in the city that we were in like like an activity

We rolled the roller coaster in Vegas

You know, I went to the mob museum and hung out there too

And then the last day

Jake and I would go into the conference and crush the conference and the team had the free day to do whatever the heck they wanted

If they wanted to spend time together awesome if they wanted to go to their own thing it was awesome

But we made sure that

Quarterly we were doing things to bring the group together and if we couldn't do it in person

We would do it virtually. We would do something fun virtually together. Yeah, companies would fix that

They wouldn't get to a position where people were quiet kid quitting and checking out and not paying attention to zoom meetings and feeling like there's no relationship

Because you're actively building a relationship

That can help cure a lot of the communication gaps that we struggle with desperately the restaurant connects Greg your turn

I want to go back and touch on one thing you said

Where you talked about culture and then you gave some excellent examples physical examples like people listen to you can picture it

But go I can see that happen and I can see that happen like and

This is where culture is now I'm going to go have theoretical on you

It's the cumulative result of

Observed actions. So in your first startup where you ended up not liking everybody

People observed the actions you may have had a mission statement in the vision somewhere and all those things and these are our corporate values

Okay, those are nice really what we mess out of two

Watching what you do and they're like yeah, you know

They said these things and they sound really good, you know mom apple pie all that kind of thing

And then the behavior it doesn't match

That's the people might listen to what you say

But they've really watched what you do that's where culture comes from and that's how people know how to behave

Without being told

Was like hey, we built this culture where we trust each other to take a set of actions consistently

That's a culture culture is not the thing that's hanging in the lobby of your corporate headquarters

That you probably overpaid somebody to put together for you that nobody ever read

That's like hmm, man, that's not getting the people together and the example that you gave

Everybody remembers that they walk away and like we were together. We felt good. We talked about the good things

They remember that

Quizm hey, what are our corporate values? I don't know

Yeah, like maybe maybe the what's your point on that

Do your port on that some some people mess it up and only put it on a poster and some people mess it up and and half

Hasardly create their culture and and I would say restaurant connect we did that

I mean we we were able to grow to 36,000 recurring month through revenues after three years

But man it sucked the way we did it

Um, it was just it was hard and it could have been so much easier our our culture was built around a mutual understanding that we were pretty relentless

And we were super dedicated to hospitality at an extreme level

And so it allowed it allowed us to move forward because at the end they were all good people with integrity

Um, you know, so that that helped to at vision at

Video power our culture was developed. I mean we were pretty much I don't want to say bro marketers

We really have a better than that, but we were we were young guys who understood the value of work life balance and family

Above all else and we I came in and I said a tone that number one Jake's role

He needs to be golfing as much as possible with executives

That's where he wins his deals and everybody knew that kind of resonated for all of us

And so there was an unspoken reality that we could all do something like that too

We uh, he needed to be speaking on as many stages as possible and podcasts as possible

And so we knew the importance of gain authority gain awareness getting out there on stage

And three he needs to be playing the jazz piano at those events um because that's where people fall in love with Jake

And again, we were all fairly talented in different aspects similar to that

And so we understood how to embrace those realities and lastly I said guys um and as long as we get our work done

We have unlimited vacation days and you can work whenever you want

Oh, you know, and so that that kind of on accident set a cultural tone that was super helpful

And I would add that a restaurant connect. I'm sorry at first class business

We do have a poster culture. Oh, right something that I learned after was like wait we could have done even better back then

How do we how do we really intentionally

Paid it like paid our dues with figuring out well, how do how do cultures work together at scale?

And I'm a huge fan of Patrick Lynn Choney and his five just functions of a team

One of the posters we follow is about his low performance teams versus high performance teams

And then another one that we follow is our own cultural values of love, patience, persistence, consistency and reliability

And it's my job as a team leader

To check in with people not to do the random mic. Hey, do you know our core four or five values?

You know and and just make it about the

the memorization

But it was a Chris Whitehood of the iconic podcast man that guy's an awesome leader as well and I was I was talking to him about core values and

I said how do you how do you um

Inspired team to be accountable to the to like the workforce and and for what they're doing and and he says just he said just

Old and accountable to the core values

Um, you know, and if they if you see them

Doing something outside of the core values and talk to him about like hey that wasn't in your case jack that was very loving

Um, you know, can we talk about that um and and have a conversation about how we can handle things

Through the means of that core value and everything was like whoa, do you like you just

Simplify to everything for me now all I have to do is go back to oh, you know what that wasn't a consistent action

Um, you know, can we talk about that and why consistency is important?

So that's been really really helpful for bridging our communication gaps and also making sure that I don't then freak out on people

It's like oh, okay, Jackson you're freaking out. Where's the love and what you're doing and I can be like

That's the inconsistency part

Right. Yes, sir. So go ahead Greg

so um

Barrowing ideas as you talk Jackson so that the thing you did

Possibly without thinking about it could you do it all the time

You drew this beautiful compare and contrast picture

Organization one we became very transactional. Why didn't you get this done? When's it going to be done?

Organization two hey, you need to be playing a jazz piano and you can golf as much as you want

That's not hard for people to grasp

And then they see you following through on it

You're at a conference somewhere and this guy is actually paying playing the jazz piano

Like no, he was serious when he said that he like he meant it

Versus the first one right you didn't have anything that compared the highly transactional nature of the way

That organization operated to something better

And

People

What's the word I'm looking for they feel it like they just

Intuitively feel it like oh, yeah, I get you know compare and contrast is sort of analytical language

You want them to feel it organization one this organization two this got it

Now you want to bring somebody in talk about compare and contrast it might be helpful

And they say the two words got it that's a hell of a lot better than compare and contrast

Absolutely my friends. We're going to come back in one of the greatest challenges for visionaries and the early stages

If you guys just like I did thought well, let's just follow what the business world is doing

And the business world is made up of 96% of companies failing within 10 years

So I don't tend to follow a path where 96% of people are going to fail

I decide you know, but let's find a new way to do things mark twain style

We're going to talk about how

Expectations are one of the things that absolutely cripples and crushes brands and when you got a world focus on quarterly

Expectations like no wonder businesses are doing so poorly. We can do better than that. We'll be back

We'll talk about of the grid. All right. Welcome in to vision pros live with Jackson calum on your show hosts

We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building fantastic visions out there

You

Hey, what's up welcome in to vision pros live. I'm your show host Jackson calum founder and CEO first class business

And I've got great Kaiser here with me today

I don't know whether to call this episode a mastermind session or a mentorship session

Reg's doing an excellent job of mentoring me as we go. I've already learned so much in the last 23 minutes of just exploring

What my path has looked like seen that journal

But also hearing him talk through and and help me to pick like wow these are other things that we can learn on top of this

And I'm like, oh, that's a good point. I need to talk to my team about that

So there's a lot that we're going to gain. We're talking about expectations next and several other aspects of leadership

They can help you lead your vision with precision grace and grow it as well as possible

And these are all of this about establishing a legacy my friends before we do that

I always want to give a couple of extra

Value points one is journey to wellness plan calm

Dr. Shannon and Dr. Justin Pierce my hope is that today this message is catch

Somebody who's been struggling with some element of health that they they don't know how to uh how to resolve

Dr. Shannon is somebody that has helped three of my friends and family members

I've known them for eight years and I follow up with people when I send people a certain direction and I asked all three of them later

How it went with Shannon all three of them raved about how she was able to help them with things that other doctors were not able to and so

That's one of those special care points for me if you know somebody in your life

That is suffering you have an opportunity to step up and make an introduction and let them take it from there

Again, thank you Shannon for all that you've done for my friends and family

Then there's a practice makes permanent with Jennifer Reed

Jennifer Reed specializes in

Emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence and helping facilitate that in corporate workplaces

That was something that I hadn't heard about before as into integrating

Eskume or spiritual intelligence into workplace. I thought well, that's kind of taboo

That's something that I would could see a lot of people being resistant to while that's my fear of the unknown talking

That's not a progressive individual thinking how might this benefit my my workforce

She's also worked in government agencies for more than 20 years including the IRS and if I think about cultures

That could be difficult to shift perspective and and bring great culture in

She's been training in my opinion in one of the hardest places

There is in relation to leadership and helping people develop so the the big reason the why I would talk to Jennifer

And when you're looking at hiring leadership experts cultural developers

I would recommend asking them

What is the reason like why do they care? What is it that they do this for?

Some people will give you the transactional answer of oh well

It's because I studied under blah blah blah

That they answer that way just thank them for their time asking to send you info and move on

if their story

Ultimately inspires you then that's somebody that you should consider because they're they have a personal reason for wanting to do this

I will challenge you or actually warn you have a box of clinics is with you when you ask Jennifer Reed

Why does she do what we she does you will see an absolute champion of EQ and ask you and somebody who can help take your culture

The next level and if you don't know this taking culture to the next level is one of the greatest financial impacts for good

That you can have on your company because when people show up to work and they actually want to be there

Well, it's amazing how much better they take care of the people that you're striving to take care of

So let's move on to the water project the water project is something it's near and due to my heart at this point

I've got an empty glass here

But I only have to walk like four steps to get access to water have never been thirsty in my life

These people in Africa there are millions who do not have access to clean drinking water

Their kids have to leave school to go get water for the for their school

These people have to leave work sometimes to go find water and they don't know where they're going to find it

And when I found out about that

I was I had to meditate on it was like outly that's rough

And I loved that the water project allows you to choose a specific community

And if you give ten to twenty dollars to that project they will actually include you

Ultimately as kind of an investor

Aware of what happens to that project you get to see it come to fruition

You get to find out if they're building a sandam or bore whole well things

I had never heard of in my life before

And I was like how neat and transparent is this?

I see these kids celebrating water like my kids celebrate christmas day

And I realized that we have a very very cool way to impact the world in a meaningful way

By doing so little so as long as I'm going to rock this microphone

I'm going to do it to do what I can to help the eight billion people out there

And so my other request from you is if you have a cause that inspires you drop in the comments

Let us know about the cause. I will personally take a look at it and see what I can do to help out

I might even talk about it here on the show

But I'll definitely talk about it with one or two my guests

And see what's possible to make things happen for others and without further ado

We'll go back to helping every single one of you

With building out your visions and this is one of the most important sacred topics

It's why we talk about it all the time is how much better can become a leadership because we can create a clear vision

A great culture and an awesome set of leaders surrounding us

Then we have something amazing that we can now mark it and our vision can take off and we can scale it really well

So Greg welcome back to vision pros life

Jackson even your sponsorship section

Is completely consistent

So you're going through

Well, we got to talk about EQ

You know emotional intelligence

And people in the room start squirming like

Can't we just go back to talk about the numbers

Right on blue collar

Yeah, like we're talking about the numbers

No, this is emotion stuff

Yeah, like I'm a businessman. This is what I do. I want to talk about EPS. No, you know

There's a way to get there

But then the other one because you mentioned it earlier and then you came back to it in that section

Is this idea of mentoring

And this is

Frequently you hear people say well, I never had a mentor

Which is sad

Yeah, because the way I try to explain it to people is coaching is technical

Yeah, here's how you do this technical thing here's how we put together our marketing campaigns and has these

Activities and components

Mentoring is about perspective

Well, you know, I've seen a hundred marketing campaigns and I can help you differentiate

The reasons why some worked and some didn't

And it broadens the perspective of the person being mentored

That like hey, this is the big picture. Here's how your part fits in the big picture

You know because marketing campaigns are great

But then somebody has to actually go sell somebody and then your accounts receivable department

Has to track down those invoices make sure you get paid and blah blah all that stuff

A mentor can help you see that big picture

That when you're downmired in the technical side

That's really hard to pull yourself back up

And say oh wait, I'm part of this big integrated system

And it's the integration part that the mentors can really really help with

Yes, and I was lucky. I had a really good mentor early in my career

And I didn't know what that I didn't know what the guy was doing at first

Mm-hmm every week he's like hey, when you get a minute stop by

Like why you know because I'm at the highly transactional level

I've command he put his feet up on his desk. Hey, what are you working on

And then he would go through it and it's like oh, well, do you understand what happens when you get done doing what you do

No

He's like well, let me take a minute to explain this it probably took four or five me four or five weeks or meetings with this guy

Before I started actually asking him questions

And then he really hit his stride

He's like oh, I'm so happy you're interested in that

He's like, you know that that tells me that you're thinking ahead of a little bit now

Let me help build that up a little bit. This is why you need to think ahead

And he was such a nice guy like he never made me feel like because he was a VP and I was

entry-level person what why God's name this guy ever decided he was gonna spend time with me. God bless him

But he did and

That you know because then I went back later and I'm like, you know, I could do that for other people

You can't do it when you're

In your second or third year of working experience

You simply lack that broad perspective. I'll challenge that thousand percent

Okay, thousand percent challenge at a hundred percent

my daughter is

Well, let's just go with my youngest daughter. She's five years old. She's got five years of perspective. I don't have in life

I happen to have 38 years of perspective that she doesn't have in life or my teenage daughter

She's got

She's got the same things you have 14 years on me that I don't have and so I can learn from everybody and anybody

It's up to me to choose who I learned from and so the mentorship opportunities that exist

I don't think it's wise for us to put limits on who can and who can't because all eight billion people on this planet have something that we can learn from

And that even from a mentorship role if I want to know more about

Makeup and hair. I'll go to my daughter

She's got me beat in that category

And so there's a so I want to appreciate what you said that it is it's certainly very very helpful

For us to make sure that we honor those who have the greater experience

You know, they have more experience in life

but can we also make sure to

Completely maximize the opportunities to learn from those who have less experience to Amazon does as well

So with Amazon I learned that Jeff Bezos when they run their meetings rigged they have the person who's newest to the company speak first

Yep, and the reason why they do that is because that person won't speak if everybody else is already spoken

Um, and so they start with that person that person's also the least tainted

And the person who has less understanding of the bureaucracy challenges that exist in the company

So they'll see things nobody else would dare to say and that expands everybody's horizon to be able to be more open to new ideas

So continue though

Well, let me do what we do Jackson. Let me push back

Lab course. How did you get the age 38 with by skipping your first five years of life

You said you don't have that perspective at why I don't have her perspective. No, that's I don't have her perspective

That's a context the context is the way you understand the situation you're in

So five-year-old context for the world is very different than yours because you got 38 years

Of really hard experience you've forgotten what it's like

To be five-year-old

Not at all, Greg. In fact, that's another opportunity that I was going to talk about

If you guys and this I was going to make a dark joke about it

If you guys want your kids to understand

What the importance of a mentor is you could follow my dad's example

Just leave when your child's for um that opens your horizon out to realize

So no, I I've varied it my first cells experience. That was three years old

I ran into my parents' bedroom because they were screaming

I jumped across the bed pushed them apart and it was peaceful of a loud voice like could I sit stop?

I was selling peace for my home

And as a kid, you know you you with a with a dad who's an alcoholic you could end up very very hurt in that situation

But something about me I had some type of alpha experience with it made to understand that that was my role

That's what I needed to do and I spent the rest of my life

Selling peace and different homes that I spent a lot of time in and so I've got thanks to my dad over 100 dads

You know in my life that helped me figure things out here and there

And so I I wouldn't say that it's a lost perspective as much as it's an abundance of appreciation

For the reality that my five years in America for instance

Was very different than my friends five years that live in Ecuador

Yeah, the living that live in

Colombia or that lived in that house across the street that seemed exactly like ours

But probably wasn't even close. So there's still an opportunity there to realize that what I have is

Is not reflected as a lack just because I appreciate the angle that somebody else comes from

Well, and that I would go back to your example of

Was it Bezos?

Amazon where they get the person who has the least experience to talk first

I can't remember the name of the author, but there's a book out there called the Ministry of Common Sense

Fabulous book and it's it touches on that

You can't let people be in an organization for so long

That the things that are not working well are no longer obvious to them because when you get to high enough level nobody's gonna tell you

Hey, you know, I don't want to bother you with this little thing

They have to encourage them to bother them with that little thing

Like you know, I'm so far above that and I'm thinking about the next acquisition our company's gonna make and this and that and like

Well, no wait the companies we already own are not doing this well

Because of where they sit they just can't see it anymore

So they're 100% effective is different. I love that

and

You and I won't agree on the

Context thing, but that's okay

Sure, that is okay, and I but I love what you're saying because one of my team members that's newer has forced me to open my eyes

Pretty much forced me to open my eyes in ways that I wouldn't in the past. I would sell past it

And what I mean by that is I would justify some of where our business was struggling in order to focus on other areas

But this person kind of put a hard stop was like no

Everybody who sees this is going to be embarrassed about our company. You've got to fix it

So now we've got a new quote because they beat into my head over three months of me being slow and stubborn and accepting it

But then I was finally like holy crap. Okay, new quote for the company no more half-baked projects

You know, we've got to finish things I'm gonna get to the end. So let's go back to expectations

On this is expectations are also

Part of what probably drove that reality

But we've also got to be careful my friends to put expectations and check

Expectations and as we we wrote in the description for those you hear this is exact

I want to make sure we fulfill on those realities talked about how when they aren't clear

Strategy gets lost

And frustration spreads organization. Well, I would also counter our own description

Expectations also lead to strategy getting overbearing

Execution slowing down because people are frustrated. They start to quite quit and that frustration spreads across the organization a huge storm because as

Shakespeare said expectation is the root of all heartache

Expectations my friends is one of the greatest vices in the world one of the greatest invisible vices

It is the if we look for a synonym of what I expect to happen

I have a sense of entitlement

With that and the entitled generation that is generation

Millennial mine and generations e etc

There's a there's a need to defend what we want and have but there's an obsession that occurs

When we decide that I I should have this this is this is something that's deservedly mine

The virtue that mirrors that that's almost never talked about anymore is an old word called aspiration

And aspiration means I can still want and care for things to move forward. It can still be intentional about moving it

But I'm no longer going to allow my disappointments to dominate my attitude and my character

When my team is struggling to bring set aspiration to fruition

I can now still receive what I have with grace while also still being intent with I'm still going to accomplish my goals

So Greg I want to a little bit deep there. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well

Expectations aspirations and how do we how do we help our team members not get to this boiling point of frustration?

Yeah, so and you touch on all the things so

aspirations live up at the strategy level

This is how we will be competitive. This is how we'll win in the marketplace. Well, that's aspirational

until

You said expectations and people go out and do the things that are consistent with that aspiration

So if you can keep coming back to that's like hey, this is who we want to be

This it's becoming we're going to become this we're not this yet, but we're going to become this

Here's how we become this thing and you like there's certain behaviors that are consistent with becoming that thing

And people tend to miss that because if you say aspirational the connotation of that word is

We might get there we might not if you take it back to expectation and

Allow me to add a qualifier to it. Yeah, it has to be a realistic expectation

You know realistically I will never play in the NBA

I'm six feet tall and I'm not kind of old

That's

It's not a realistic expectation

It's realistic expectation for me to go play pickup basketball somewhere. Okay

But you have to help people with that so to go them back to the communication part

People have to understand what you're communicating about

With details, but then more importantly

Once everybody's on the same page right they get this realistic view

They have to leave and go back to their day job

With an understanding of the actions

That they'll take based on what they've now agreed to

That's very different than this is where we want to be aspirationally

To know like there are certain things I have to do

Do do when I get back to my desk or wherever it is they work table whatever

Um

That's really different and it's hard to do

Yeah, it is a it's a real blast to stay up at the aspirational level

Well, there's there's an interesting opportunity there. I'm a big fan of the movie with Ryan Reynolds chaos theory

Um, and he's this like smart goal nut who's all about time management until his life absolutely falls apart

Um, and he then starts to to understand the values. It's a it's a romcom

Um, it's again pretty off the off the walls, but he uh

Going back to the aspirational and the realism aspect. I'm a big fan of both smart goals and behags

Um, right, and so you guys can all look those up behags being the big hairy audacious goals that don't make sense to anybody

We wouldn't be flying across the world in ten cans called airplanes

All right, if somebody hadn't created a goal that was absolutely stupid

Um, and so the the behags they're very important

Well, again, I agree that the smart goals are also important. I still think expectation is a hidden poison

Um, and that if we're going to lean into something similar to it. Let's go back to the word hope

Or that we've also destroyed um, you know, we people used to say hope was a good thing nowadays if you say well

I hope it happens somebody goes what do you mean? Um, or they say or they say um, I hope he doesn't screw that up

Um, right, we use that word that used to be a virtue and a way that ultimately degrades a situation

And so we have an opportunity to lean back in and find out what the heck did hope actually mean

What is it supposed to mean to us and hope is meant to mean like we have a a secure belief

That something is going to take place um, it is not a uh, I don't think this is going to happen

And so let me let me fear and and worry and say well, I'm just going to give up before I even try um, so there's there's

Opportunities with that great. I want to give you a chance to talk about your proven framework as well

Um, and so we we've got the opportunity to talk about this innovative managed framework that builds consistency across teams without sacrificing flexibility

Uh, yes, well communication systems that eliminate confusion and frustration at work and translate strategy and do action

Across every level of the organization which often doesn't happen with strategy

And turning these businesses into clear execution across the teams

This proven framework will help us have more consistent leadership

Which is definitely something that I need and that my team would benefit from always

How do we get more and more consistent what we do? So regulates here about the proven framework

Well, and this is the fascinating thing because I call this thing the management framework

Management is not as hot a topic as leadership

I want to be a leader

Okay, you don't self proclaim that if to go do things

So I put this management framework together and we'll bore you with all the Venn diagrams and everything

the management framework is

It's on there somewhere Jackson. I don't know where it's a circle that has five components

And sitting up so think of it as a clock face

Up at 12 o'clock you have planning

This whole management framework sits a lower level

Then strategy

Strategy gets delivered to a management team and then the management team says okay

I need go off and build plans that's up at 12 o'clock

Then you move around to three o'clock on the clock face and you have people

When I have a plan

Then I can start to understand what resources people resources I need to execute the plan

Then you come down to the bottom or at 6 p.m. On the clock directing

People need to know what to do like the first company you described

It sounds like you spend a lot of time directing

It's transactional do this do that do this do that

Then you come around to nine o'clock or nine p.m. On the clock face where you have measuring and modifying well how did that work

We should probably talk about that like how did this work out

But anchoring this whole framework is the thing we were talking about today jackson. It's communication

That is how you integrate or tie together

I like to use the word synthesize, but somebody told me that

That word's kind of turn off so I'll use integrate

We integrate all of those things how do you integrate people and planning and directing and

Improving results you do it by communicating with people you don't assume

Well, everybody gets this no no in fact everybody doesn't get that

You know when someone says well, you just don't get it

I always turn that around to

They don't get it because you didn't give it to them

Like right don't push it back over to them like stand in front of the mirror and say

Mm-hmm

They didn't get that that means somehow my communication was inferior

And then you can start to pick it apart and say well where did it fail

And that's how you can really start to accelerate how you communicate with people when you're

sufficiently humble to say

I didn't give it to them. That's why they didn't get it

And that's you know that you could get into a whole different discussion on that

But I know you've probably seen this yourself

and

As the leader you get frustrated

Because it's so obvious to you the thing that has to happen

And the direction that you're trying to take the team that it just frustrates the heck out of people

Like no believe me if you gave them what they needed

They would be pushing you for more

Right they would be following you so hard they'd be like

Hey, there's people are running up on me again like there

That's you mentioned John Maxwell somewhere earlier

He's written some of the best stuff on leadership that's out there because he's super practical about it

And you know he gives a concept or a principle

And then he lays in the examples of well, this is what it looks like so if you saw it you would know it

I'm like oh yeah, okay, I got it now

You know, he makes that connection and for these leaders quote-unquote

They're frustrated by their people that don't get it

They need to go back and deconstruct what happened between them originally delivering

Yep mitigation

To this lack of understanding part you're at now

This is one of the most important lessons for me for 2026

Okay, thank you. Great. This is huge and I actually don't think I mentioned John Maxwell

But he where he is worth mentioning. I was reading him yesterday. I apologize

Okay, well, I'm a huge fan of relationships one-on-one and I definitely listen to a lot of his interviews

But I need to do more read on him because every time I read a mic. Well, it's amazing

So he's he's a big big but what's really cool Greg about what you shared is

It's it's knowledge that's applicable in a new way for me and some of my favorite readings and I'll say the E-Math with Mike Gerber

Um, you know, he talks about how leaders or owners often delegate by abdication

And when I read that I had to figure out with the application it

Um, and so I looked it up and I was like oh like you're

Delegating something that you don't understand and don't know how to do

Um like yeah, of course that's gonna go bad

And he said in the worst case scenario the person that you delegated to does super super well

But you keep putting more hats on their heads and what happens is eventually that person burns out at least

And now you end up with procedures, resources and templates that you don't know how they work

You got something scaled and now you've got no way to recover it

Because you never learned how to do what they did so well

And so it crashes and burns your business

So the best thing you can do is learn how to delegate responsibly

Gamify the process of creating the systems

And so I'm looking at your plan and saying this goes perfectly with the E-Math because if I put

directing people first

But I don't know what I'm directing them on

Then it creates two realities that I've gone through in the last

a couple quarters one

If they get confused about what the vision was and frustrated about the experience

When I go back and try to teach the plan

Again or teach the plan that I thought I had given or clarified

Now everybody's skeptical

Yeah, and so now it's twice as hard

You have to move the project forward because I failed to honor them with the clarity on the front end

And as visionaries we are so guilty of having such clear visions that we often do that Greg

I know we got to wrap up

I'm not talking about the visionaries by the way Jackson

But I want to give you the final the final word on this

So go ahead, go ahead, finish that thought too

You said you're a visionary, right?

Oh yeah

So the self-awareness part that might be helpful

The supermajority of people cannot keep up with visionaries

Yeah, and I know how hard that is but it's

Yeah, you're living it we have embraced it

Yeah, well, if we don't embrace it

It's only going to create new consequences in life that we may not want

All right, and so it's a super super valuable

Oh, guys, I interrupted you

No, no, it's okay. I was going to say

As we as we wrap up

I want to give you the last opportunity to speak

And on that thought process or rather rather the last golden nugget

Greg

If this was the last time that you had the chance to get into visionaries ears

And to give them a piece of counsel

I want to counsel me

Right, so this is the thing so

The work I do is I try to instill in people management fundamentals

And most people don't want to hear that

Like no, I want the secret sauce. I want the hack like I want the shortcut

I'm like, you know, I'm sorry, but there isn't one

You build a building on top of a lousy foundation

A couple of years. It's going to fall over

So the thing I try to get across to people

It particularly people in the visionary space because they're moving so fast

Is management which as your company scales you need

Management isn't one thing

It's a skill set. It's a collection of things

And in order for your people to function at the best level they can

You've got to make sure they have this skill set

You know, so when you look at looks like a sports

You got a football player soccer for the Americans

Who can score goals better than anybody

But play zero defense and has no assist because he never passes

That's not really a complete player. There's some skills

They don't have a skill set. They have a skill and a super valuable skill

They don't have a skill set

The best players are described as well. They're well-rounded

Well, there's a reason for that they can contribute

No matter who's around them. They have a way of contributing

And that's if I get like that's the one thing if I can get across to people say no

Stop thinking about these surgical strikes

I need a technical skill in coding

Okay

Um your coders probably gonna have to talk to some end users

Can they communicate with other people that would be kind of helpful

Yep, not usually

They need it

Well, no, if they're looking at your shoes

You know, they're interested if they're looking at their shoes, you know, they're not interested

Interesting

Well, good, I appreciate that

I worked with a lot of them

And these

Management fundamentals and skill sets

Craigs giving us some great insight

John Maxwell's got great insight

Michael Gerber's got a great insight

Patrick, when Choney's got great insight

I didn't mention John Whaley, but I wanted to

He's one of my favorite leaders

And he talks about several silver lining of challenge we have in life

The silver road

That life has often granted us

Amazing, amazing individual

And these skill sets these fundamentals

You can reach out to Greg Kaiser

On LinkedIn, sure you can find him on google quite easy as well

Of course get the book on amazon

My friends lean into those

Who that you align with from a mentorship standpoint

Mastermind with them find out what they have

How you can implement it

Allow them to see behind the curtains

Of what's going on when you find somebody who

Will you trust because I can I can see and feel Greg's heart

In this process I know that he wants to help people

As much as possible Greg you've done that for me

Vision pros if any of you want to join us on the show

Click the button this is be our guest

Come and join us on the show we'll see in the next episode

Take care everybody and Greg

Thanks again for blessing my life

Terrific Jacks, we really appreciate it

Thank you for being here today

I'm really happy that you tuned in to vision pros live

I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions

As these episodes continue to move forth

This is going to get more and more fun

We'll have more and more engagement as well

One bite people to participate in the show

And thank you for giving us your time and attention

Have an excellent time building out your vision

And become an vision pro yourself