Mike Goldman  
The culture starts with you. If you're not happy with the culture of the organization, if you feel like they're, you know, as an example, if you feel like there's not enough trust within the organization. But when you look in the mirror, you say, well, I will, I'll trust people when they earn my trust. You're part of the problem.

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business. But we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from, we believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. As always, I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And I want to have conversations with real people and hear real stories about how love in business can come together. Mike Goldman is joining me today. Mike is a leadership team coach and the best selling author of two books, breakthrough leadership, team, and performance breakthrough. He spends his time speaking internationally to groups of business leaders, such as the Young Presidents Organization, and the Entrepreneurs Organization. And during his 30 plus year coaching and consulting career, he has worked with clients that include Disney, Verizon, Chanel and polo, Ralph Lauren, his insights have been featured in Forbes Fast Company. And Chief Executive Magazine is widely regarded by CEOs as the expert on building great leadership teams. So I'm really excited and honored to have you on the show today, Mike, how you doing?

Mike Goldman  
 Doing great, Jeff, great to be on the show. 

Jeff Ma  
Awesome, awesome. And I, I just listed an incredible resume of things that you've done. But I want to roll backwards from there. I want to go back in time. And I want to know kind of what you consider to be your your starting point like where did this this road that you're on this path that you've been on? Where did that start? How did that start?

Mike Goldman  
It started back in a log cabin in the Midwest? No, it was back in 1987. That's how old I am back in 1987. I got my first job out of college and it my life. My business life started out as a management consultant, working with a company now known as Accenture. Although they were Arthur Andersen way back when worked with two big consulting firms, the first half of my career was consulting to Fortune 500 companies, some of the impressive companies that that you listed in my intro, but from there two things happen. One is the travel. In doing that really got to me, I spent three and a half years back in the late 90s, early 2000s, three and a half years traveling from New Jersey to California where I worked with Levis in San Francisco, Disney's retail operation outside of LA. Monday through Thursday, or Monday through Friday, every week, I was on the west coast with two small kids at home, one of them with special needs, wife working full time. So I had finally had enough of that and decided I was going to start my own business. I'd never done that before. You think as a consultant, I must know what I'm doing to start my own business. I had no clue I was working with Fortune five hundreds on specific projects, I had no idea how to run a small business. So my first business no shock staffing and recruiting firm. No shock was a total failure over three years. But that was my MBA in small business. So I learned a ton of what not to do, sir maybe a few things of what to do, but mostly what not to do. And from there decided to get back to my consulting roots, but become more of a coach which is very different in my mind. And also start working with small and mid market companies where I can have a real impact versus the fortune 500 Which I never viewed as being much fun to work with. So have had the coaching business for 15 years now. But but that's how I got here.

Jeff Ma  
Amazing. And I know you have a term breakthrough leadership team, which I want to dive into. But can you talk a little bit about your passion around that? So before we dive into the actual what is a breakthrough leadership team like what in that journey kind of got you into this, this this passion that you have? 

Mike Goldman  
Yeah, my passion is it's much bigger as you can imagine that breakthrough leadership team and I'm sure will talk about that, but my passion is really learning. And then sharing that learning with others, I, I'm usually reading two or three books at a time, maybe one on Audible. I'm reading, you know, a couple, a fun book, and then another book. And I just, you know, when I back when I was in school, all I wanted to do was get out of going to class and didn't want to study and, you know, did well, but never never gave a rip about learning, I just wanted to graduate. And at some point, I'm not sure when I really started loving learning. So for me, coaching is such a great way for me to, to to exercise that muscle, and constantly be reading and learning new things. And figuring out how I take those things and share them with my clients use them in my own business, but also share them with my clients that over and above anything else is, is my passion learning and then sharing that.

Jeff Ma  
I love that and I relate so much to you, I feel like I'm on a similar path in my life as well where learning has been, it's just every year that passes, I find myself hungry and hungry for learning. So I get really excited to get to talk to folks like you, because there's always an opportunity. I love that.So let me dive into I guess your philosophy, if you will, then whether it's breakthrough leadership team, or what else? What is your your coaching and leadership strategy, I guess?

Mike Goldman  
Yeah, and this, it all kind of came together in a different way. Really, over the last few years, I would always talk to you about generic stuff, like, Oh, my philosophy is, you know, or my, my purpose is I go in and help companies grow. And here's the dozen ways that I do that. And, you know, literally one morning I woke up and it hit me that, yes, I help companies grow. But my real philosophy is, if you want to be a great company, you've got to have a great leadership team. And that's what I do in my coaching. I call myself a leadership team coach. And I wrote, as you said, my last book was called Breakthrough Leadership Team. My philosophy is that, you know, as the leadership team goes, so goes your company, you know, from top down and bottom up, if you've got a problem somewhere in the company, you can probably find the root cause of it at a leadership team level. And I've learned that from the guy, almost 35 years now of coaching, consulting, having my own businesses, what I've learned is you can, you can say, Oh, we've got to fix our sales process, or we've got to fix our our cash controls, or whatever it is, you could, to me, that's like trying to help a tree grow by watering the branches of the tree. That's not going to work real well, you got to get to the roots. And to me, that leadership team is like the root of the tree. And there are six kind of pillars or six routes, you can say that I think leadership team teams need to to build a strong company to build a strong team. But that's the philosophy. It's not about going in and fixing a dozen processes. It's about creating the strongest leadership team we can create. And I know from there the right things are going to happen. I couldn't agree more. What, by your definition,

Jeff Ma  
is the key difference between a great leadership team and a mediocre one?

Unknown Speaker  
Well, if we think about it at a company level,

Mike Goldman  
I believe there are three things there are three things that I use to measure whether a company is a great company. And then I can talk a little bit more detail about whether a team is a is a great team, but from at a company level. It's certainly about dollars, you know, and I say that first not because it's most important, but it's what people most often think of. Absolutely, if you don't have consistent top and bottom line growth. You don't I don't think you have a great company. And it's hard to sustain a great company because if you don't have profitability, if you don't have cash flow, you're not going to be able to afford to, to attract and keep the right people. You're not going to keep them interested by doing new and great things and investing in the business. So it certainly is top and bottom line growth. Number two and no less important is a company that has created a growing fulfilling environment for their employees.

Unknown Speaker  
I talk to prospective clients all the time, who want to build a big company. So they can get a bigger boat, or a bigger house, and they want to do that on the backs of their employees. And those are phone calls, I end pretty quickly, because those are not the folks that I want to work with. So number one, it's about top and bottom line growth. Number two, it's a growing fulfilling environment. And number three, it's about having a real impact, adding real value to society. Whatever society means for you, society, could mean your employees society could mean your clients, your vendors, your society could mean your city, your town, you know, it could mean the world. So I think a great company has got to do all those things. And then from a leadership team standpoint, there, there are six things I think a leadership team needs to, to master and I'll run through them Jeff, really quick, and then we can dive to you, whatever, whatever you want to dive into. But number one, to be part of a great leadership team, to have the ability to be a great leader, you've got to master self leadership. So the number one pillar of a great leadership team is the individual members on the team have to be working every single day on mastering self leadership. Number two, it's about finding the right people. You know, how do you go out and find folks that are a fit with your organization that will perform as A-players within your organization. So number one, mastering self leadership, number two, finding the right people. Number three, proactively structuring the team. It's not just about getting a bunch of great people, it's understanding for your business, for the goals within your business for where you are in the business, how does that team need to be structured? What are the functions who's accountable for those functions, so there's structuring, proactively structuring the team is number three. Number four, is about building a resilient culture on the team. Number five is about executing with discipline on the team executing with very little drama holding each other accountable. And number six, the last pillar is developing and improving the team. And that's all about knowing how to assess your talent, coach your talent, develop your talent. And there are times when you need to cut the cord on folks that don't fit.

Jeff Ma  
All six of these make a lot of sense to me. And I want more of all of them. Based on thinking to fit into the podcast, I'm going to pick one to start because it stood out to me, which is building resilient culture. And obviously, I bring it up because we talk about culture quite a bit here. And all of these contribute to culture, to be honest, but this one this word resilience is one that is near and dear to my heart, I'd love to hear you dive a little deeper on this particular pillar.

Mike Goldman  
So when I talk about building a resilient culture, it's about three V's, and I think this is where, Jeff to your point, we get into the theme of love here as well. So the three V's are values, vision, and vulnerability. So let me dive a little deeper on that. So every company has a set of core values. That's the first day now, I don't care whether you have a beautiful poster, or on your website, you've got a beautiful set of values. Values are the non negotiable behaviors that are really the anchor to your culture. Now, some companies proactively identify what's best, what's right, what's most noble, about their organization, and say, These are the three to five core values, non negotiable behaviors, some are not proactive about it. Some never define them. But they evolve. And if you're not careful, they might evolve into things like - "Whoever yells the loudest wins" might be a non negotiable behavior in your organization. But it starts with non negotiable behaviors. It starts with those core values. That's the first V. The second V is vision. Vision is you know, you could have values, but if you don't have vision, you're not being propelled anywhere. And I think your culture ought to be propelling you somewhere as well. So vision is about the long term, almost never changing parts of your vision, like what's your purpose, as an organization? What's your 10 to15 year, you know, I'll use a Jim Collins term here, what's your 10 to 15 year big, hairy, audacious goal, what's your three year vision for the organization, your the folks on your leadership team not only need to understand the vision, they need to be evangelists of that vision. And then the third V is vulnerability. And vulnerability is all about trust, but not task based trust, not necessarily I trust Jeff, when you say you're going to have this done on Wednesday, you're going to have it done on Wednesday. That's important trust. But what I really mean by trust, within this third via vulnerability, is that vulnerability based trust, which says, I can say the difficult thing to you, I could give you feedback, I could receive feedback from you. And I know you're coming from positive intent, I know you're coming from love of the organization, love of our team, love for me, as a team member, it says that, that I'm willing to say the hard thing, and hear the hard thing, and and get through whatever we need to get through. And I do a number of exercises with my clients to help them build that over time. But when I say resilient culture, those are the three things that are most important the values, the vision, and that vulnerability.

Jeff Ma  
Well said, I loving the way you structure this, things that I believe wholeheartedly in and I love how you've positioned them.

Drawing from my experience of working with with organizations and teams and leaders.

Everything you said is a challenge for many organizations of many individuals, much less organizations, but um, you know, when it comes to that what you see more often with these three V's is thata company will have a vision laid out, especially in larger organizations, right? They'll have a vision laid out in words. And then they'll have values laid out in words. And then there's what people actually experience and see within the walls, which is another words that the hidden layer of values and visions, in other words, the true vision and values of the people who experienced that workplace. And that I'm curious, you mentioned you do some exercises around vulnerability. You can share or not share those. But my question is really around what is your approach to breaking down these three V's especially vulnerability, so that, especially in these organizations that have existed for for decades in a way that really looked down upon vulnerability, or looked at vulnerability as a weakness, and something that should not be in the workplace? How do you reposition that for people? How, what are these exercises you're doing to help expose that side in leadership? 

Mike Goldman  
Yes, it's a great question. And I will tell you that I'm actually going to hit on values first, but keep me honest, to get back to vulnerability, if I forget. But for the first half, or so of my career, I thought the idea of core values was corporate BS that came from books or smart consultants, and companies kind of ticked it off the list. Yup, got our core values done. We've got the big plaque down in the lobby that's got our core values. And it's meaningless. It's a marketing tool at best to say, here's how wonderful we are. And we care about values, but they're meaningless. And that's the way it is for most companies. The approach that I take Well, I'll tell you a quick story is I had one new client I was working with a number of years ago when I started talking about core values and the that one of their VPs. And it was a leadership team of five people, one of their VP said, Oh, we could save some time. We've got those. She ran out of the room, grab the framed plaque with their core values, and said, we've got these we don't have to talk about him. I said, that's great. said, let me see that. I took it, put it against the wall words facing the wall. I asked the five key leaders of the company, three of them were owners. I said, Okay, tell me what your core values are. "I think there's one about collaborate". I think they didn't know what they were. Yeah. So I said we're working on it. So so you've got to make it real for them. And one of the ways I make that a couple of ways I make values real, is I have three tests of a core value. If they tell me " respect is one of our core values" or you know, or "collaboration is one of our core values", or I have one client, a marketing firm say "creativity was a core value", said, Okay, let's go through the three tests. First test of a core value is, are you committed to firing anyone who repeatedly and blatantly violates that core value? Remember, they're non negotiable? And they said, Well, yeah. And I said, Okay, so let me test that I said, you've got someone who's a kick ass member of your accounts payable team, but they're not incredibly creative. Are you firing them? No? then it's not a core value, right? They say someone says respect. I say great. I love that. I love respect for other people. That's beautiful. Your number one salesperson who's bringing in 60% of your revenue, treats everybody else like dogshit.But they're bringing in 60% of revenue. They don't respect anybody. Are you firing them? Well, no, not if they're bringing in that kind of revenue, then it's not a core value. So the first test is, is it a fireable offense?  Second Test is are you willing to take a financial hit to uphold that core value. And the third test is, is it alive in the organization today? Because if it's aspirational, it can't be non negotiable. So So those three tests of values make it real for folks. I also when I helped my I helped my clients assess their talent, who's performing as an A performing as a B, performing as a C, and what we call performing as a toxic C. Whether someone is living the core values is just important, in fact, slightly more important than their productivity. So those things make values real, that's on the value side. Skipping over to Vulnerability. One of the exercises, I do a number of exercises with my teams, one of the exercises I love, I call the peer accountability, exercise, peer accountability exercises, I get the whole team sitting around in a circle. And starting with the CEO, each member of the team gives us the CEO, as an example, each member of the team goes around a circle and says, here's something you do that really helps the team and I want to thank you for it, I hope you keep doing it round the circle. Next time around the circle, here's something you do that really hurts the team. And I wish you'd work on it, or I'd wish you'd fix it or stop doing it. Starting with the CEO, everybody on the team gets that feedback from everyone else. When I first introduced that exercise, the teams all get green, it looks like they're going to be sick, because they're scared to share that stuff. They're scared to find out that stuff is well from others. And once they share it, they realize it's not as hard as they thought. They realize that they got a ton of value. They commit to what they're going to change based on it. And they start to kind of build their muscles, where they start to do that, not only when I come in and say, Okay, we're going to do the peer accountability exercise, they start to get more comfortable about giving and receiving feedback every day. And that that, to me is the most important way to build that vulnerability based trust is to be able to give and receive that feedback and know it's coming from a good place.

Jeff Ma  
Awesome, awesome stuff. I think a lot of people who are listening to this, probably, and I know they aren't because I talked to them too.They hear this and it sounds great. It sounds amazing. But oftentimes they struggle applying it or or picturing themselves in it, because the workplaces that they know that many of us know are already in such a different state. Their leaders are seemingly immovable objects when it comes to these types of things. What do you have for them in terms of hope or no hope? Around what what should they expect? What can they do and what what is what is going to make a difference here for for the everyday person who's basically under the oppressive rule, let's say of a culture that isn't practicing this isn't has no desire to change.

Mike Goldman  
No shock that the answer is going to depend  on where you are in the organization, right? If you are a leader within the organization, and that when I say a leader, it could be someone on that executive team. Or it could be someone, maybe down in the organization, but you are a leader of others, I would say, you know, the culture starts with you. If you're not happy with the culture of the organization, if you feel like they're, you know, as an example, if you feel like there's not enough trust within the organization, but when you look in the mirror, you say, well, I will, I'll trust people, when they earn my trust, you're part of the problem. Right? If you are I tell leaders I work with, excuse me, I work with executive teams. And when someone new comes on to the executive team, people say, Well, you know, that person needs to earn my trust, that's garbage, they're on your team, you need to trust them, they're part of your number one team, right now, you need to be loyal to them, you need to work with them, you need to assume trust to begin with, don't wait until until until they earn it. So number one, if you're someone at a leadership level somewhere and you have a problem with the culture, look in the mirror first, because the culture is made up of you, and every focus on what you can control. So that's number one.

If you're down lower in the organization, where at least your perspective is that you don't have the power to change things, I would say, number one, you have a lot more power than you think. And again, even if you're not a quote unquote, leader within the organization, it starts with you, it starts with you looking in the mirror, but then I'll get pragmatic, right, if you're in an organization of 5000 people and your employee number, you know, 4998, you know, you're at a junior level, and you know, you're not leading the team, and you're realizing, man, that culture is not something you're comfortable with, that it probably makes sense for you to start looking around to find the right place, it doesn't, you know, it's kind of the opposite of what I tell leaders, when they, when they have someone on their team that is not living the culture, not living the core values. What I say to them is, if you've got someone not living the core values, that doesn't make them bad people, just makes them a bad fit for your organization, they could probably go somewhere else, almost definitely go somewhere else, and be an A player over there. They're just not a fit for what your organization is all about. Man set them free to go be in A player somewhere else. And it's the same thing. If you're just a team member, and you feel like you don't have that much control. If you're not happy with the culture of that company, if it doesn't, doesn't fit who you are, that doesn't mean it's a bad company that may or may not mean it's a bad culture. But if it's not the right fit for you, then you may have to make a different decision, you may have to find someplace that is a better fit for you. But I always think the first thing you do is look in the mirror, you start living the culture that you want to see in the organization, you know, be Be the change, you want to see who said that that's a quote from somebody, I didn't make that up and be the change that you want to see in that organization. That's the first step. 

Jeff Ma  
That's Gandhi

Mike Goldman  
I knew somebody a little smarter than I was. 

Jeff Ma  
Be the change you want to see in the world for sure. I couldn't agree more. I feel like you're, you're inspiring me all over again, with all the things that I already believed in. So this is amazing, amazing stuff. I brought this. I brought this up early on but the term breakthrough leadership team, is that a team that basically practices these six things, or is there some other element to it that makes it a specifically proper noun, breakthrough leadership? It's a team that that it's a combination of the two things I mentioned earlier, it's a team that is practicing these things, these six things, not necessarily at a perfect level back not at a perfect level, because you never get there. And it's all your while I'm getting really good at, you know, finding the right people, but we've got some problems, you know, over on the execution side, we've gotten great at execution. But man, our culture needs some work. You're always going to be working on that. So a breakthrough leadership team to me is, is a team that is working day in and day out to, to to reach their, you know, to reach their potential in all six of those areas. And it's also a team that has built a great company, those three things a company with top and bottom line growth, growing, fulfilling work environment, and they're having adding real value having real impact on society.

Got it? I think when I hear all these things that make up, you know, like you said, not a perfect team, but essentially the ideal state to have as a leadership team. It's, it can be lofty. And I go back to this frequently where it's, it's because of my experience, maybe I'm a little jaded. But when we, when we, when we work with folks, it's just, it's just a lot. For people to make this much change. It takes a lot of time. And especially depending on where you come from where your starting point is, some of it is drastic, like you mentioned, personal change. It's a lot of, of introspection and mindset, shifting and unlearning a lot of things that you've, you've known the only way to be for decades. What is your approach, specifically to those individuals? How do you break through those fixed mindsets?

Mike Goldman  
All of this needs to start with that first pillar, which is mastering self leadership. And I'll pick two things in particular that I coach on in those areas that I think Jeff , hit your question, which is, number one. You need to focus on those things you can control. Call it the locus of control, there's an you can have an internal locus of control or an external locus of control, an external locus of control says the world is happening to me. You say things like, you know, how can my people, you know, never understand or why why are our clients so unforgiving? Everything is a problem out there, you know, the economy, we can't do this, because of the economy. It's out there. As long as the problems out there, you're not solving it. An internal locus of control, turns that around and says, What am I in control of? Instead of saying, Why are our customers so unforgiving? Every time we have a problem? You turn that into a question like, What can we do to build strong relationships with our clients? Instead of why doesn't my team seem to care about our results as much as I do? Turn that into a question, which is, How can I how can I, you know, communicate with my employees? So they feel more ownership? You know, how do I inspire them to feel more ownership. So number one, it's about saying, I can focus on the world of things, I'm going to focus on what I can control. And then the other kind of switch and focus, I call them focus switches that I have people make is a focus switch from believing in the negative intent of others, which I do all the time I coach on it. But all the time someone cuts me off on the highway, I think they're just a maniac, knowing they're doing something dangerous, but they do it anyway, to shifting that focus to saying, let's let's, let's assume that everybody's doing the best they can, with the resources they have doesn't mean everybody's doing the right thing. They may not have the resources you have, they may not have the information you have. Or maybe they know something you don't know. But if we assume positive intent of from other people, instead of getting angry, we get curious. We ask really empowering questions, we build relationships instead of tearing them down. So I think it all starts with self leadership. Because to your point, Jeff, this can all feel really overwhelming. But what I've learned is overwhelm is not a time management problem. Overwhelm is a focus problem. And when you master self leadership, you learn to master your focus, and say things like, there are 157 problems out there. What's the next most important thing I need to do? Because if I try and focus on 157, my head's going to explode. And I'm going to feel like, I'm getting nowhere. What's the next most important thing I need to do? There also needs to be an understanding that you're not going to solve the problems of the world, in a month or in three months, or ever. It's a journey. It's a never ending process. And if you've got the right people around you, if you've got the right culture around you, that journey is going to be fun. Sometimes it's going to be really hard. And you know, sometimes it's not going to feel like a lot of fun. But even though those days when it's not fun if you've got the right vision, you're going to look up and go. Yeah, today kind of sucked. But remember why we're doing this. We got some more important things we got to do. Let you know, let's go get them. Let's go get them tomorrow. So all the all those pillars are important. But if it doesn't start with mastering your focus and self leadership, you're going to be overwhelmed by all of it. And you're going to quit before you have any chance to succeed.

Jeff Ma  
Wisdom. Absolutely awesome stuff, Mike. Out of time, but not out of questions. So maybe maybe we'll chat again, hopefully, soon at some point. But I really appreciate the time you've taken today. And these these these just solid, solid nuggets of absolute wisdom that you've been sharing with us. It's gotten me excited. Like I mentioned, I've been taking notes, it's actually helping me out quite a bit as well. And I hope the audience feels the same way. How can somebody reach you or connect with you? What's the best way if they have more to learn? 

Mike Goldman  
Yeah, number, they can go to my website at mike-goldman.com. My YouTube channel, you can have YouTube handles now. And my handle is Mike Goldman Coach, so they can connect me with me there. They could also connect with me on Instagram at Mike Goldman Coach. And the other thing that I'll offer up is if, if you go to mike-goldman.com/limitless There's actually a free video course all about how you assess the talent on your team, how you coach the talent on your team, how you develop them, and when when do you know when you should be cutting the cord on somebody on your team. So that is a four video course that people can get for free at mike-goldman.com/limitless 

Jeff Ma  
Awesome, awesome. Please be sure to check out that resource if you get a chance. And as always, for the viewers thank you so much for tuning in and check out if you haven't already our book Love as a Business Strategy. Check out both of of Mike's books when you get a chance. That's the Breakthrough Leadership Team and Performance breakthrough. And and Mike once again, thank you so much for all the insights and the wisdom today that you've shared. Thank you. This is great. All right. With that we will see everybody next week, everybody take care.