Transcript: The 5 Critical Leadership Moves You're Probably Ignoring // Dr. Steve Graves, Cornerstone

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“The 5 Critical Leadership Moves You're Probably Ignoring“

October 21, 2024

Steve Graves

Intro: As a leader, are you spending 80% of your time doing things you should be delegating and 20% on the things only you should do? Well, in today's episode we're zooming in on the essential tasks of senior leaders. We've got some incredible insights lined up from a thought leader who has years of experience helping leaders focus on what matters most. Trust me, you don't want to miss this conversation. It's packed with the kind of wisdom that can only improve the way you lead.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hi, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the Road to Flourishing. My passion is to equip Christian leaders like you to cultivate engaged, flourishing workplaces. And this fall we’ve dedicating our Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast to one of the most-powerful drivers of flourishing cultures, and that’s inspirational leadership. Join us as we dive into the insightful conversations of top leaders who will provide you with tools and inspiration to grow and excel in your leadership journey.

And today, I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Steve Graves to the podcast. Steve's an executive coach and the author of numerous books, including The Five Tasks: What Every Senior Leader Needs to Do!

In our conversation, Steve Graves explores the intersection of Christian faith and business leadership. Steve discusses the importance of integrating faith into business practices, the essential tasks that leaders must accomplish, and the significance of setting direction and speed within an organization. Steve emphasizes the need for leaders to invest in their people, cultivate a healthy organizational culture, and empower the next generation of leaders. Our discussion highlights practical insights and strategies for effective leadership in both marketplace and nonprofit texts.

I think you're going to love this interview with Steve Graves. But before we dive in, this podcast is proudly sponsored by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey. Don’t wait. This fall is the perfect time to gather vital insights from your employees to assess the health of your workplace culture. Are you ready to transform your culture today? Well, visit workplaces.org to learn more and start your journey to becoming a flourishing workplace.

And hello to our new listeners. And again, I thank you so much as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable episodes like this. Be sure to share it with others.

And let me tell you just a little bit more about Dr. Steve Graves. He's been advising CEOs, business owners, and entrepreneurs for decades through Cornerstone, his executive coaching company. At any given time, Steve is working with a handful of remarkable executives leading large global companies; young, hungry entrepreneurs just starting out; and maybe a global not for profit. He's authored 18 books and worked with thousands of leaders, weaving themes of strategy, leadership, and faith, hoping to help people flourish in their life and work. When Steve is not filling up a whiteboard or with a client or friend, you can find him fishing in a cold, clear river somewhere in northwest Arkansas. He also serves on several nonprofit boards.

So, here’s my conversation with Steve Graves.

Steve, it's great to have you on the podcast. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

Steve Graves: Thanks, Al. I'm honored to be here with you today.

Al: Well, Steve, you've said that in your formative years you were intellectually ambidextrous with a theology book in one hand and a business book in the other. And you consult with leaders in both marketplace businesses as well as Christian nonprofits. So share with us some of the examples of how you see a high regard for Christian faith and excellence in business practices as you work day to day in this leadership area.

Steve: When that question comes up, I immediately think back to an incident, or story, where my original business partner and I, Tom, we had been invited to go to Chicago—this is decades ago, Al, when we first started our CEO coaching consulting practice—but we were invited to go to Chicago. And our friend Ken Blanchard at the time was writing a book. And if Ken or you know anything about him, he has just written so, so many books. Well, one of the styles that he used to write a book then, and I believe still today, is he would love to gather experts, subject-matter experts, leading thinkers, all kind of thought leaders around a topic. He would gather them for the day, they would talk about a topic, and then he would synthesize a lot of their commentary and put it into some form of a book or some of the application of the book. So we've been invited to go to Chicago. And in this particular setting, it was one of his early faith-work efforts. And in this setting there was kind of the many leaders in the church movement at that time. If you were leading a megachurch in America, there was a really good chance you were sitting in this big, giant, round circle room. And if you were a Christian CEO leading an organization, in a company, there's a good chance you were sitting there as well. And so my partner and I sat there and observed. Let's say there were 25 to 35 people there that day, maybe a little bit more. I can’t remember exactly. But here’s the key: when Ken would ask a question that had anything to do with the soft side of life, the pastoral side of life, the shepherding side of life, the heart side of life, all these pastors would lean into their microphones, and all these business guys would lean back away. They would shy back away. And all these pastors would just talk and talk and talk. And then whenever he asked a question about strategy or a P&L or anything that had to do with the hard skills of life, that had anything to do with business dynamics and orientation, corporate enterprise, any of that, these pastors would do the exact opposite. They would lean back in their chairs, and all these CEOs would just lean into their microphones.

And I remember Tom and I saying to each other, “Man, there's got to be a way that both of these parties could speak intelligently at the same time about the same topics because all of life is really intended to be one giant integrated effort on our part, with God in the middle.” And so that was kind of an early signal to us on this exploration and discovery of how to integrate a more mature understanding and application of one's Bible in your left hand and a Harvard Business Review, as it were, in the right hand.

Al: Yeah. I love that combination. Absolutely. Well, and that's what brought us together.

You've written a number of books, and one of them that we're going to focus on today is called The Five Tasks: What Every Senior Leader Needs to Do! And it was recommended to me by April Chapman, the CEO of Generous Giving, and she referred to the book on a podcast. So, every leader needs to accomplish important tasks and not be derailed by urgent issues that come up day to day to day. And so you likened the ways that leaders spend their times to the Pareto principle—and I really liked that—that many leaders are spending 80% of their time on things other people should be doing, and then they focus only 20% of their time on the essential tasks for their job. So would you flesh this out a little bit for us? Why do leaders get sidetracked into issues and tasks that should be delegated to others? And as our listeners are listening to this today, I'm curious where they might put themselves. What can a wise leader discern when they're losing focus and spending 80% of the time on things that other people should be doing?

Steve: Yeah. It's not easy. You know, it's not really easy, because there's a number of reasons. You know, some of us, at our core, some of us are more, we're more performer contributors than manager contributors. Performer contributors are pastors and lawyers and plumbers and artists and football players and dentists and law—you know. I mean, anybody who drives outcomes and outputs through their skill sets, that's a performer contributor. Well, a manager contributor is someone who's driving outputs and results and outcomes through other people's skill sets. They're the conductor of the orchestra. A good conductor is not playing the oboe at the same time that he or she is trying to lead the orchestra. I mean, their job, their only job is to bring output, to bring result, to bring dramatic expression of music through the orchestra. And so that's a huge distinction.

And a lot of super performers—a super performer in finance or a super performer in sales or a super performer in any functionality or vertical in a company—they got where they got in part because of their performer-contributor wiring. And so it's a huge shift for somebody to have to shift from doing things to leading people. And that’s not the same assignment. And unfortunately, a lot of times in big corporations, until the last few decades, big corporations often thought that because I was a super performer at doing things, then I obviously must be a super performer at leading people. And those are two different complete functionalities. And so often it's very easy for somebody who's riding a career curve going up, it’s very easy for them to suddenly find themselves in a new assignment, and the assignment is not doing a bunch of tasks; it’s leading a bunch of people. And literally, it's not my to-do list; it's other people's to-do list.

And if you reduced it down to the most elementary form, it would be like, Al, if you and I, together, started a little food truck and, you know, together you and I were in there slinging tacos or something, well, that's fine. We're great. But then all of a sudden, if we said, “Well, let's build 10 more,” well, there's no possible way we can be open at lunch or dinner with just you and I slinging tacos. We got to learn how to train other people to sling tacos like you and I would at the quality level, the efficiency and time level, and all of that.

And so it can become less intentional and more accidental for leaders to just find themselves often in the role of I end up, 80% of my time, I'm doing something that someone else could.

Another quick thing. Often, some people are not very good at what I call macro managing. They really are at their best being all involved in the details of work. Not sitting high and setting direction, not setting the why and the what that someone else is supposed to do, they really love migrating down into the how and the when and who's going to do it and all of that. And so it happens more than we think. But it takes a concerted, intentional effort for a leader to say, “I'm going to focus on the things that my role, my seat, my job description as a senior leader or CEO or founder, whatever, those things are asking me to do. And I'm going to push work down and out to other people.”

Al: So, the Pareto principle. And oftentimes, Steve, don't we all, just to feel comfortable, kind of do what we like to do as well, not necessarily what we should be doing?

Steve: Yeah. Well, you actually touched on perhaps the biggest item is if I'm in a seat of leadership, I actually probably can find, I can pick the things that I want to do. And so I can find myself filling my time with the things that I really enjoy or they're easy for me or fulfilling for me or whatever. So, yeah.

Al: Yeah. So macro managing, and I love that idea and that term. And people find it so frustrating when they feel micromanaged, but focusing on the why and the what, not the how and the when.

Steve: Yeah. And just before we jump to another topic, it's one of the things that's really common, is it's very, very common for—I wrote a little monograph on this—it's the macro manager, the micromanager, and the non manager. And non managers actually often are mistaken for macro managers, but a macro manager and a non manager are not the same thing.

So, a non manager will say, “Well, I'm not all micromanaging. I'm hands off,” and they are hands off. But they're not providing any why or any what. I mean nobody ever has input. You know, in today's world every high performer has got to have some kind of steering and guiding, no matter how high performing they really are. So there's a distinction between a macro and a non manager, for sure. We all know the distinction between a macro and a micromanager. That's more than obvious. But this other one also can be a little tricky at times.

Al: Yeah. Yeah. So for our listeners, that's the question: where would your team put you? Are you a macro manager, a micromanager, or a non manager? which really leads us to the next topic I was thinking about, and that is here we work with companies and nonprofits to help them have engaged employees and flourishing workplaces. And one of the eight factors that we found really drive employee engagement in the Christian workplace is sustainable strategy. So it includes clear consensus around goals and effective strategy for meeting the needs of those we serve. And then your Five Tasks book. This is an area that you start with, that a leader needs to set direction. So can you give us some practical insights as to how an effective senior leader sets direction and articulates a clear and compelling vision for their organization or something that will get the staff to rally around the common vision? How do you do that?

Steve: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the book came out of, I'm more of a straight-back writer and speaker. I spend all my time working with CEOs, business owners, and entrepreneurs. I have for decades. And it’s not that I don't do research, I do, but I'm more straight back than I am pulpit or classroom, Al. And so I’ve just spent decades and decades working with CEOs and senior leaders.

And after all of these years, I finally kind of began to distill down, you know, if I had to put it into a list, what list what I say? At the end of the day, give me a leader that's setting these five things, and I think I'll tell you, there's an organization or a group of investors or board that will be pleased with the outcomes. And the idea is to set direction, speed, risk, resources, and culture. And I know we're going to unpack them one at a time. But the idea, Al, is that the leader has to set these. It’s like setting a post for a fence. You set it so that when the concrete dries it's there. It can help you.

And you can have any kind of personality. I mean, I've worked with CEOs who have the most wildly extroverted personality you can imagine. And conversely, I've worked with leaders that are so inward focused, I mean, it's crazy how introverted they might be. And so it's not a matter of personality.

And you can either set them from the top down; you can set them from the bottom up; you can set them from the middle and just let it bake its way each way. But at the end of the day, the job of the senior leader is to make sure these five things are set in your organizational culture.

And the mistake is thinking that, “Well, if I don't set them, they won't be set.” Not true. Not true. Someone else, generally—a hyper achiever, someone who has a lot of ambition—if you’re absentee in setting these five, there's a really good chance somebody else is going to set them. And now guess what? Someone has kind of began to hijack the very organization that you either might own or supposed to be running or whatever.

One of the first things that I do think a senior leader or CEO business owner has to do is to set direction. Now, direction can either—basically, direction means that I'm going to go there, not there. And direction can either be literal; it can be physical; it can be geographical. It can be Chick-fil-A saying, “We're going to go to these cities, not those cities.” It can be Chick-fil-A saying, “We're going international, or not going international.” So it can be literal or physical or geographical, but it also could be strategic or conceptual. It could be Chick-fil-A saying, “You know what?” We're going to stop, and I'll just stay with them again, only because I actually ate there today for lunch.

Al: There you go.

Steve: And I'm still sipping on the Chick-fil-A drink. But it could be more conceptual or strategic, where they were a company like a restaurant says, “You know what? We're going to stop having a huge emphasis on coming inside our restaurant and eating. And we're going to literally redesign for the organization to be a drive thru, a pick up.”

I don't know if you might remember, but decades ago, Taco Bell went through this massive evolution years, decades ago, where they literally stopped being a Mexican-food restaurant, and they became a taco delivery system. And so literally, they began to shut down their stores, dozens and hundreds at a time. And they didn't tear them down; they just flipped their footprint. And what used to be the restaurant now was the kitchen, and what used to be the kitchen was now the restaurant. And so you could go in there and sit at— and you could order, walk in, order, eat your tacos in there if you wanted to. But they really had no interest in you having a great luxury dining experience. They wanted you to grab your tacos and roll. And so they literally began to attach taco bills to gas stations, outlets, airports. Anywhere you could pick up a taco, that's what their plan was. So that was a set direction, more from a philosophical, conceptual idea.

So when a senior leader sets direction, they literally are saying, “We're going there, not there.” And so what happens, Al, is we don't necessarily have to set direction every day, but our direction is usually tested every day, one way or the other. And so it's up to the leader just to kind of become very clear and courageous with their ability to kind of set direction of “We’re going there, not there.”

Al: And it's interesting that you say, okay, so I hear a lot of people say, “Well, we're going there.” You're saying, no, it's not just “We're going there,” but “We're not going this other place.” And so that's an interesting distinction.

Steve: Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the hardest things, as we all know, is—especially if you're a people pleaser or especially if you've got a lot of salesmen in you—salesmen are the easiest people to sell to. I mean, always have been.

Al: They are. Yeah.

Steve: They are. They always have been. And so, by the way, salesmen are also the easiest people to grow a company on because they know how to grow top line. And so one of the hardest things is learning how to say yes, no, and, then, not now. Like, you can say, not now, but it's you being able to drive the energy. I've said for decades, and I still say it and still actually believe it, every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. Every organization's perfectly designed to get the results it gets. Well, if I'm needing focus and direction, then it's up to me to actually provide that, in the sense of saying exactly what you said: “We're going there, but also, by the way, we're not going to do that, or we're not going to do that,” which it's important, and it's often missed with leadership.

Al: Exactly. Well, again, we often talk about how the world is rapidly changing, and that's the change seems to be accelerating. So, you know, the speed of change can feel overwhelming to people. And as leaders, need to respond to conditions that are changing as well.

So, there are also times when we need to slow down and make well-considered decisions. And this is one of the areas that you focus on in your book. So how does a leader discern when to move quickly and then when to maybe have a slower pace? And when you're talking about setting the speed for your organization, you mentioned there's hazards at both ends, so from going too fast or going too slow. So, give us your thoughts on that.

Steve: Well, yeah. The second thing that I suggest that leaders, the job of a leader, is to set direction, number one. Number two, set speed. And no organization over time really sets the speed of a market. We might for just a minute, just a second, set the speed of a market if we have a big innovation or a big idea. But generally, we don't set the speed of the market; we set the speed that I'm going to relate to the speed of the market. The market sets its own speed. There's all kinds of reasons and elements that are driving the speed of any market, whether it's e-commerce. I mean, I live in northwest Arkansas, down the street from Walmart headquarters, Walmart headquarters, and Walmart’s not setting the speed of e-commerce. Amazon is not setting the speed of e-commerce. We might set the speed for just a minute. So my job is to, as an organizational senior leader, is to set the speed that we're going to relate to the speed of the market.

Now, what that does is that brings up your question of, in the speed of the market, basically, is me deciding I'm going to go this fast, I'm going to go that slow, and by the way, I can live with the consequences of that decision. I had a CEO of a privately held company years ago. I remember we were talking about his growth that he had just gone through, all kinds of. And it was a small to medium size. It was a 200 to 300 million, a privately held company. And at that time, he was a client of mine, and we were talking about what they needed to do the next year. And I remember that we made the case that perhaps he just needed to slow down and let his culture catch up with him, let his leadership-development engine catch up with him. Because what was happening is this: his growth was outstripping his talent. And sometimes you’re fine. Sometimes, you know, I mean, generally speaking, most of the time, you don't hire right at the right moment. You usually hire a little ahead or a little behind or something like that. But as an overall arching data point, he had over and over, year after year for a few years, they had literally just not kept up with their internal leadership engine development model that they needed. And so he basically said, “For the next 18 months, we're going to slow down. We're not going into negatives, we're not going to be losing money, but we're not going to be having these huge aspirational growth targets and all these things, and we're just going to slow down.”

Now, fortunately for him, he had not had any outside money invested into his company. And fortunately for him, he was the super majority owned sole proprietor, so he can make that decision. And he did. And so for 18 months, he slowed it down. He rewired his organizational leadership model and kind of went slow to go fast in the future. And then, literally 18 months later, they exploded, and they've doubled, if not tripled, his company today.

Al: That is very perceptive. I know, and I might fall in this category at times, we just want to go as fast as we can, and yet at the same time, have we let our culture, have we let our talent catch up so that we can, then, leverage for future growth? And I've seen it, you've seen it, where growth just will, then, implode if you don't have the infrastructure and people and processes to keep up. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Totally agree. Totally agree.

And we live in a fast culture. I mean, if an organization, if a leader and their organization say, “We’re going to slow down,” you’ve got to be able to look in the mirror and live with results, because there's a really good chance something will happen around you, a competitor will come in and perhaps do something. And so it makes a leader—it kind of touches back to the top one, where a leader has to decisively get comfortable with the direction that they're setting. And so the setting of the speed is a really important thing—which you were hitting on it, Al, and I'll lean into it—it's my job to set the speed that we're going to relate to the speed of the market, and that has to show up in the kind of culture, the kind of speed.

I remember years ago I was meeting with a particular group of leaders, and they were trying to figure out—it was actually still in the food business. I can't believe I’ve given you two food examples today—but they were trying to figure out how to speed up their drive-thru experience, and they were literally trying to shave seconds off of their drive-thru experience. And that didn't sound like a big deal until you multiplied it times a whole bunch of stores across a whole bunch of minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years. And so what they had to do is they had to help people understand how to work faster inside their individual task. And so what they had to do as a culture is say, “We have to speed up our ability to process and to work.” And so they had hire fast workers, not slow workers. Every leader’s got to figure out what the speed of your business is going to be relative to the culture and the vertical that you're in, and then the kind of company that you want to run.

Al: That's great. Wow. Is there a good level of growth that is sustainable over time?

Steve: I don't have a number for you. I do know this: I do know I'm a huge believer that businesses go through life cycles just like humans. And I was actually speaking to our staff at our—I go to a pretty large church in northwest Arkansas, and I was talking to them. We're 50 years old now. And so I was talking to them the other day. They invited me to come as the old guy, the old person, and to come talk and speak with them. And I was talking to them about how it's really interesting because businesses go through and companies go through life cycles just like humans do. And I think there's some times in your life cycle that you really are in a fast, “up and to the right” curve. Things are fine. And high growth does not mean that you're unhealthy automatically. It can. It can, but it doesn't have to be. I mean, you know, every teenager that I know that's 13 and he's a male, I mean, they're eating more food than you can feed them. And there's a good chance that they're going to be—I mean, you can almost look at them and they watch them grow daily almost. And so it doesn't mean you're unhealthy. But at the same time, the other extreme would be, I've got to prioritize health along with our over growth as an organizational leader. And if hypergrowth is the only thing that I've hooked my wagon to, I might find myself being a little disappointed because I might lose talented people. I might have designed my organization for a faulty outcome, or any other thing like that.

Have you, I mean, you've worked with as many companies as I have through the years. Have you noticed any number that you would say is the magic number?

Al: I've got no research that points to an individual number. Intuitively, I think of, in normal times, 20% real growth is a good number, but it's great to have, if you're new to the market and you see some real positive upswings, and it varies by industry, too, and kind of what the constraints are. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah, you nailed it. The industries are different. And then, you know, if I'm still in an early-stage business, you know, I believe, basically, businesses are either in a 0 to 1 stage, or a 1 to 5 stage, or a 5 to 500 stage. And for me, it's not the age or the size of the business; it's the cycle time that the business is in compared to the market and the industry and all of that stuff. And if I'm in an early-stage business, I might still be enjoying incredible organic growth and having some big numbers, but I might find myself suddenly flattening out, and I have to have different tools in my toolbox to maintain a really aggressive growth strategy, or at least some growth numbers. But the speed thing’s interesting.

Al: Yeah. Well, thanks. This has been really a great conversation.

But another essential task that you talk about is to set resources. And this includes money. It also makes sure that you've got a strong focus on the power of people as a key resource for a business or nonprofit. And people development is certainly a key task of senior leaders. So you mentioned the importance of character, that you can train for skills but not character. This speaks to the importance of good hiring decisions and also ongoing development. So give an example or two of practical ways that senior leaders need to be investing in their people.

Steve: The senior leader sets direction. You set speed, you set risk, and you set resources. And I think there's three big resources in the toolbox of every senior leader. There's people, there's structure, and there's money. Now, I know there's more than that. I know there's more than that. But this would be like looking and saying, there's a hammer, there's a screwdriver, and there's a pair of pliers, or they're kind of the three non-negotiables in everybody's toolbox. And so there's, again, there's people, there's structure, and there's money. And the senior leader’s job is to make sure that they're setting the right people in the right seat to do the right work; that they're setting the right structure that's the right design model for optimal outcomes for them; and then, they're setting the right economics, they're setting the right money in place, the smart, effective, correct amount of capital to grow the company.

So when it comes to people, I'm a huge believer in what I call re-recruiting your talent over and over. We spend a tremendous amount of money and effort and focus and energy recruiting people to jobs. And I see that all day, every day, with my clients and with various companies that I relate to. And there's nothing wrong with that. You want to have a great hiring model, but what happens often is once we hire a person, a talent, a person of talent, what happens is often the senior leader just kind of hands off and assumes that, “Well, I hired the talent. Obviously, it’s up to them to do what I’m paying them the big money to go do.” And then all of a sudden, weeks and months can turn into years, and the senior leader doesn't continue to re-recruit them. And then all of a sudden, one day the senior leader has this note that says, “Hey, hey, Al, are you free to get coffee with me tomorrow morning?” And you say, “Oh, yeah, sure.” And so we get coffee, and I say, “Hey, Al, I just want to let you know I’m leaving.” And you say, “Leaving? Like, for what, where? Like, what are you talking about, Steve? Why would you be leaving? I thought this was the perfect job.” And I say, “Well, I love my job. But somebody came along and they told me I could be an EVP with them, not just a VP.”

And so I'm a huge believer in constantly investing and re-recruiting your people over and over. And I'm not saying that you have to hype that, but I am saying that you have to resource people as if you're re-recruiting them, not just recruiting. We lay out the resources when we're recruiting somebody. Think about the meal we take them to. Think about how much we spend to get them to come down and see us, and on and on. But then after that, we just kind of give them a paycheck and a bonus, and we just expect them to get work done. So I'm a huge believer in re-recruiting.

Al: I love that. And I've often given that recommendation to identify your top people and to make sure that you're re-recruiting them because, as you say, you think about the time and energy that you put into recruiting somebody new. And if you just put part of that time and energy into re-recruiting your top talent that you've got now, you're further off ahead, there's no question.

Steve: The quote, Al, that I have used for years also, which I, again, I love it because I see it and I believe it with me and others, but it's a quote that says, “A strong gift can take you where the absence of other gifts cannot keep you.” And so what happens is we'll hire somebody with some strong gifts, otherwise we wouldn't have hired them, and they wouldn't have gotten the job. But the lack of real full formation and full orb-composite build out of who they are as a person and as a leader can often be the shortcoming for them to not, you know, become the person, the best version of themselves, the most mature version of themselves as a leader. So what I need to do, if I own a company or if I'm a leader of a company or senior leader and I have people underneath my management, is I need to make sure that I've built kind of the incubator, the green house, the launching pad, the engine that helps people build out the full-orbed complement of skill sets, not just the one superpower that got him the job.

Al: Build out and incubator or a green house. I love that. Yeah. Yeah.

So, Steve, you wrap up your five talents by saying that leaders need to set culture and that a healthy culture can be your most valuable asset. And I’ll just say amen to that. So this resonates because our full focus at Best Christian Workplaces is to equip and inspire Christian leaders to create engaged, flourishing workplaces. And a healthy culture is certainly key to a flourishing workplace. So, you say that culture is what we do and also what we allow. And again, I love the where we’re going and where we're not going, but a culture is what we do and also what we allow. Some organizations have a culture gap where their stated beliefs aren't aligning with their actual actions. So what does it mean for a leader to attend to their culture, from your perspective? What are some of the specific ways that senior leaders need to set culture and also intentionally keep their focus on culture and identify maybe what they should not allow?

Steve: Well, we know that setting a culture is both intentional and accidental. A lot of what we accidentally allow can over time become the strongest roots and the strongest limbs in our culture. And so it's very important that we actually live up to our culture and we let our culture become the driving flywheel of our enterprise. And we also know that defining and articulating a healthy culture is one thing; institutionalizing it is another. And so what a leader has got to do is figure out what framework, what toolbox, what kind of ecosystem has to be created for someone to institutionalize a culture, not just put words to the culture and say, “This is what it is.” And that becomes the hard part. And then what has to happen is I've got to, then, make sure that I allow my authority, my power, my influence, my budget, my money, my promotions, my titles, I've got to lean all of that into my value system if I really want my culture to take on that sense of mission and values and vision and all of that stuff. What happens a lot of times is people will articulate one culture, but then they keep their budget and their structure over here, and that supports a whole different culture. And you can’t do that. You've got to be able to let the hard decisions live themselves out with your culture. And it's not easy. I don't mean to be flippant or too shallow with it, because it's hard. It's hard to apply culture norms. It's not an easy thing to do. But over time—I do believe what you said earlier, and I agree with you completely, Al—if over time, if an organization can get its culture into its flywheel stage, where it's really operating with some energy and some influence, your culture can become a key asset. I mean, it can be almost like $1 million in the bank, or if that doesn't mean anything, it can be, like, $100 million, whatever it is that would be a significant head turner for you to have some asset inside your guidance that you could utilize to grow your company. It's huge.

Al: You've done a lot of work with senior leaders, and a few years ago, you intentionally took steps to work with younger leaders as well. So generational shifts in the workplace are nothing new. But we've also seen a lot of attention in the last few years on transitions that are related to boomers leaving the workforce and making room for younger generations of leaders. And as you work with this next generation, especially in the intersection of faith and work, what gives you hope for the future of inspirational leadership? What challenges do you see that we can work through as you face these situations?

Steve: I was chatting with my buddy John Tyson, pastor in New York, this last week, and we were talking about how so many ministries that I grew up—I'm a baby boomer. I’m 68, and so as an aging baby boomer—so many ministries that I grew up with kind of as pivotal, monumental examples of Christian ministry, a lot of them are actually going through significant overhauls. And the overhauls, it’s not so much that they're overhauling the mission or even the vision, but they're overhauling some of the language, some of the nomenclature, some of the tools, and the frameworks and stuff like that. And so you kind of have to do that. You got to give the next generation the freedom to actually paint what the compelling vision and mission is, in their words.

And it's kind of crazy. If we back away from it, we might find that it's really close to the very same thing that I'd like to see happen. It's just worded differently, or something like that. And I'm not saying that everything is the same thing, but I am saying that often that becomes the hardest thing is the older generation, we're just used to stuff sounding the same way, and this is the way I did it, or whatever. And we just have got to be kind of a little bit more flexible when given the microphone and the chalk to the next leader and letting them paint the vision according to what God's calling them to do.

Al: Great.

Well, Steve, we've learned so much from our conversation today. I really appreciate it. I mean, starting off with the Bible in one hand and a Harvard Business Review in the other, the 80/20 Pareto principle, the concept of performer contributors and manager contributors, and really focusing on the people versus things for managers. And then, the keys to sustainable strategy by setting directions; managing the speed or guiding the speed in which you're going to address the market that you're in; being sure that you set resources, people, structure, and money; and how re-recruiting is a way of really helping to make sure that your talent base, your outstanding talent, as we like to say, remains with you. And then, just your thoughts on culture and your reflection on, well, is it that values are driving your culture, or is it your budget driving your culture? So, well, this has been a great conversation.

Hey, is there something you'd like to leave us with based on our conversation today, Steve?

Steve: Yeah. You know, two things. I've actually been doing some of—to answer your question earlier about transitioning. I was in the middle of kind of sunsetting my CEO coaching practice. About a year or two ago, a good buddy of mine and then my son came to me and said, “Hey, what do you think about us pulling the wheels up and letting this thing take another route?” And so, we began to re-engineer our whole coaching practice for the next generation. And one of the things we've launched is something called Cornerstone Plus+, and it's a membership-based model that allows a lot bigger, kind of a bigger window of folks to be involved in some of our content and some of our models. And over the years, I've built about 100 to 120 frameworks and tools for coaching executives and leaders. So we're doing a lot of that and providing that, Al, into a broader audience. And if anybody has any interest, they could go to—there's two or three sites. One is cornerstoneco.com. And just kind of work your way around that site until you see something called Cornerstone Plus+. And I'm a little bit like you. I'm highly encouraged with what's behind me as it relates to leaders and business owners in the faith-work conversation and ministries that are launching and churches that are being built. And I am anything but discouraged. And I know there's a lot to be concerned about in our times and cultures, but I'm a man who's pretty encouraged when I look over my shoulder at what's behind me. So I'm a lot like you. And this Cornerstone Plus+ is one thing that we've been really excited about in the last month or so, and it launches this next week.

Al: Well, Steve, that's great to know, and I really appreciate your contributions today. And as I said, I really enjoyed your book, The Five Tasks, and that's just one of many that you've participated in, for sure. So, thanks for your commitment to serving God by equipping leaders with excellence and integrity. And thanks for taking your time out today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners.

Steve: My pleasure, Al. And thanks for having me on, and thank you for all the work that you guys do as well. I appreciate it.

Al: Yeah, thanks, Steve.

Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Steve Graves. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

If you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on creating a flourishing workplace culture, please email me, al@workplaces.org.

Keep listening to our weekly podcast as we continue to learn from leaders who are proven inspirational leaders exhibiting Christian character and excellence in their leadership.

Next week we have the privilege to learn from Dr. Jason Rachels of Calvary Christian Academy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.