Leading in today's workplace: An interview with Bill Karlson

Bill Karlson is a former corporate manager and executive recruiter who now writes and speaks to groups across America about leadership and finding satisfaction in your work. His book Get Top Dollar in a Job You Love is a self-directed job search system to help them understand themselves and the work that will bring them a satisfying career. (Click here to learn more about the book.) Leader Links editor Michael Duduit recently visited with Bill about some of the challenges leaders face in the workplace.

Leader Links: One of the topics on which you frequently speak is how to bring infectious passion into the work place. Why is passion important in the work place?

Karlson: There was a study done recently that said that our economy is running at about 30% capacity. It's not due to lack of equipment or lack of lots of other things -- people just don't care about their jobs in the first place. So if you want a business reason — corporations are saying, "How do I make a change to get our people to actually look forward to coming to work so productivity goes up significantly without adding to cost?" That's the business reason for it.

The other side is that God wants me joyous, happy and free. He doesn't want me miserable and worrying and stressed out and tense all the time. I have a personal belief that we're all here for a mission. The challenge is that we're given so many more opportunities in terms of gifts, and skills, and talents and distractions that we get good at something and we stay there, even though it's not fulfilling us.

I'm amazed. I do this with audiences -- secular or not secular -- I give them a chance to talk about if they had a chance to bring passion to their life. Let's just give an example: if you won the lottery and you never had to work again -- you bought the cars, gave to the church, you've paid off the debts, given money to the kids, and you've traveled the world 10 times and you have five houses — then you say, "OK, I'm not excited about that anymore." How would you spend your time? I go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- mostly I try to get to that self-actualization level, which says I want to feel like my life is significant. That's different for every single person. Mother Teresa was certainly different from Bill Gates, and Gates from Donald Trump.

And what I hear is about half the people in any audience say I'd volunteer my time and I'd put up a foundation to help people. Well, then why aren't you doing that on the job? "I'm an accountant, Bill. I can't do that on the job." I say, "Let me give you eight different ways to take a look at that so that you can bring some passion into your life." Then I go through a series of exercises that give them a chance to look at it in a perspective they've never seen before. They say, "I didn't realize I could actually feel this way about my work."

Leader Links: As we try to lead those folks, what are some suggestions you can give to us about how to motivate passion in coworkers.

Karlson: I was a headhunter for twelve years. I spent my first four months dismally failing at that job. Made 4,000 phone calls, had zero income and nothing on the horizon. I went to a national conference and got my boss to set me up with interviews with some of the best people in the organization — multi-thousand dollar producers year after year after year — and said, 'How do you do this?" They all focused on the other side. They said, "It's not about where they work; it's about how they feel about their work. And here are the things you have to look at."

You have to find out why the people want to show up in the first place. How do we motivate people? My message is, having done that for 12 years, you can't. Not long term. You can pressure them, you can give them a carrot, you can do something that will make them jump for awhile and then they are going to go back to wherever they were before you started. If you pressure them, the sad truth is they actually go down a little below where they were before. I don't know how you get someone to follow you unless they choose to long term. So instead of trying to lead anybody — because in this country we manage them and there's a huge difference. If we're going to lead them why don't we find out what they'd like to do first and give them an opportunity to do that under the confines and challenges we have of trying to meet our own objectives.

I encourage people to do one of three things. One: Quit, because about ten to fifteen percent of people working for anybody need to move on. They've known it for a long time. You've known it for a long time but they are performing just good enough and it's not enough stress to get rid of them so you keep them. That's affecting everybody else around.

Then there are a whole bunch of people who are really ready to break off to the next level within your organization but you don't know how to give them that kind of growth to let them go. I show them how to do that. Then you have a whole bunch in the middle who really don't know why they're showing up to work. As long as the check clears they're OK. What I'll do is give them a chance to have some fun in their job, so they're driving in tomorrow morning looking forward to getting there early, and they look up and its 5:30 and they were off the clock at 5 and they don't know how that happened.

Leader Links: How about the leaders themselves? How do you help them to understand better how to motivate themselves in their work?

Karlson: It's exactly the same core philosophy. Leaders aren't born, they are built, but we don't have a particularly effective system for building leaders — except for our armed services and they do a terrific job of it. But the rest of the country is hit or miss. Most people get good at something, they get noticed, they get promoted past their point of being good at what they were doing, and now they are leading others. They may or may not ever want to or have those kinds of skills. And my perspective is let me take you through the same exact experience I want to take your people through.

Do you even want to be a leader? Is it killing you spiritually? Is it causing you to do and say things that are against your core values but you're forced to do because of the organization or the goals? You're shortening your life that way. You need to move on.

Or if you love what you do, would you stop trying to violate people by the golden rule. Do you understand that if you utilize the golden rule you're going to cause people to be upset at least three out of four times? The problem with that is it doesn't apply to business leadership. Let's say that I tend to be very externally motivated. I can talk all the time. I don't pay any attention to detail. I fly through life and I'm the corner of the company. That's how I want to be with you, the person I lead. So I'm going to treat you just like I'd like to be treated. The challenge is that if you'd look at their core personality groups there are essentially four main bodies. What if you happen to be strongly introverted and very much driven by detail and all I do is talk at you all the time, never write it down and don't give you any guidance whatsoever? How do you feel in terms of being led?

In my experience professional leaders rarely lead from their own space. They set the vision and they're out there so people know exactly where we'll going. But if I'll work with you where you are, take the time to understand where are you, why are you here in the first place, where would you prefer to sit, how would you like me to manage you, would you rather that I give you a specific amount of detail and we have a very set schedule for you because that's how you best operate or would that drive you crazy? Until I ask you I don't know. So what most leaders that I see — ineffective leaders do — is manage back to their own styles and let the other people try to figure that out, which causes significant disconnect between performance and people being people.

What's the biggest challenge organizations have? Turnover and retention. Well, as a recruiter, my peers will guarantee their people for 30 days. What if I guarantee mine for a year? I said no, I don't want one quick placement in an organization; I want a long term relationship, and if it doesn't work out I want to be the first person they call and fix it. I'll give them their money back or replace that person for free. They said: "you're nuts." I said, probably, but I made a six-figure income for twelve years.

The lessons I've learned relate to: how do I get my people to stay? What I heard from these senior leaders was: "Bill, I have to let Bob go." Why? "He's not working out." Why? It's always about fit. It's almost never about competency. Now that's what the letter is going to say that they get — the legal reasons. They don't fit. Well, what does fit mean? I have to take a look at the cultural influences, I have to start looking at the dynamics of their organization, their leadership style, I have to look at the individual personalities. What causes them to move on? I did exit interviews with every single one of them, and I went from having to send out twelve people to an interview to three, which is incredible in terms of my industry. And I almost never had somebody leave unless there was an elderly parent problem, spouse problem, child problem that had nothing to do with fit. They stayed because I took the time to get them connected with the work and then I educated the leadership in terms of how to deal with them.

So I wrote the book. All these questions about you to better make certain you know what you're getting into before you get there. Some things will cause you to quit. Please have the answers. As an example, where will you sit? You should ask, "where will I be sitting?" Have you ever asked that before? No. I've got a low level job. I've got two places I'm going to put you. I haven't thought about it. It's going to be random chance when you show up. But you happen to be extremely introverted. You're going to be doing accounting work for us. I've got two desks left. One is an open cubicle by the elevator by the girl who has the big jelly bean jar so that everybody who comes in says hi right next to you. Or I've got one in the basement with a door that rarely opens and a phone that rarely works — which would you prefer? Where could you perform at your best? How would you feel if you were by the elevator? I've designed a series of questions based on their personality.

Leader Links: What would you say is the biggest single mistake that organizations make in trying to recruit leaders?

Karlson: They don't understand that when you bring a leader in to assume your role — or any role quite frankly — they don't. If you don't understand the culture of where you're going to put someone — what happens in cultural diversity is that they don't blend. They slam into one another and the stronger culture wins and kills the weaker culture. Sadly, more often than not, an organization takes a leader out that they don't like and there is rarely an off-the-site meeting where we all talk about it. We just decide this isn't working individually and you just stop doing those little things that you could have done when you had a choice; you let them go and they start to get in deeper and deeper trouble because they are reacting in a way that cause you stress. An organization can take a leader out very quickly.

On the other hand, a strong leader who understands his organization can pull it back from an extremely difficult place and put it back on its feet. People choose to follow them based on the fact that the leader has given them a place that matches their core values. So the fundamental issue is: do you understand where your people are and what they care about? Coming in and waving a flag and giving motivating speeches is fine but it has nothing to do with long term performance. The best, effective leaders understand their people first.

I was very briefly in the army ROTC in undergraduate school. Once the commanding officer was watching me, and he pulled me aside. He said, "Bill, I really like you but I'm really concerned about your abilities to survive in Vietnam." I said, "What's the problem?"

He said, "Let me ask you something: how would you get your troops to do what you what them to do?" I said, "I'll give them an order and they'll follow it." Do you understand you can't do that? I'm an eighteen-year-old kid.

He said, "No, Bill, if you ever have to use your rank to get something done they've lost respect for you and they will take you out — sometimes literally. You have to have their trust and respect. Well, how do I do that? There are a series of things you can do to earn their trust and respect. And they come back to spiritual values. Are you a trustworthy person? Are you strong enough that I can put my faith in you and follow you, knowing that I'm going to be OK and if it doesn't work out — because leaders do not have control around them sometimes — it will still be OK?"

Leader Links: At some time, almost every leader faces the challenge of letting someone go. Is there a way that a Christian leader handles that situation that's different from a person not informed by the faith?

Karlson: Because of legalities, because litigation is so prevalent and attorneys rule the roost most of the time, I think that with bigger corporations Christian leaders act just like any other leader — they refer to somebody in human resources. It's done. People are escorted out of the building. The computers are locked down.

But when you add the spiritual piece to Christian leadership, you say, "I'm going to be of service to this person." Because you're a Christian leader you already know their heart to begin with and you're going to find the most effective way to do that so they heal as it's happening. When I've had to let people go I always do it off site. I do it in a place that is comfortable for them and I will end it. The sad truth is 90% of the time a person knows this is coming. It's not a surprise to them. The hardest are the ones who don't get it. They are just stunned.

Now I am not talking about economic stuff — I'm talking about the fit issue. It's just not going well, the performance is not there though they're trying hard. I take them off site and say, "Michael I need to talk to you about something that is very important to both of us. Let's get a cup of coffee in the morning. What's your favorite place? Great. You're going to have the day off tomorrow so we're going to meet there and I'll take care of whatever I need to take to make sure things are fine." What I want to do is be able to go to a place where they're comfortable relatively early in the morning and sit down and say, "Well, how do you think things are going with your job?" What I tend to discover is that if they're given the permission to vent — how they really feel — most of the time it's a blessing that they had the chance to move on, but they couldn't make that cut because they're married, they've got responsibilities. It's killing their spirit -- because if it's not working for them it's not working for me and we both know it but they don't know how to get out. This is a society that says you have to work and you just can't walk away from a good job when you have obligations, even if it's spiritually killing you.

I listen to them first to find out where they are. I say, "What do you think your options are?" I allow them to come back and say: I can do this, I can do that. "If you had a chance to go do something else would you?" Well, yeah. "OK, I've got maybe a blessing for you. You're going to have that chance. I wanted to meet you offsite because you might not feel good about what I say next, and if you want to cry that's OK. I'm giving you the day off so you're perfectly welcome to go home and not have any reservation about any processes. You can call me during the day, and if you want to talk about some other issues you can. The decision has been made so it's not a bargaining situation but I want to be of service and see if I can get you to the next step."

Leader Links: To quote one of your own phrases, "What is the strongest leadership secret you'll ever love?"

Karlson: That you don't have to lead to get someone to follow you. You don't have to lead to get people to follow you if you'll go where they are first. But I will tell you in corporate America it is almost never done. We have really, really good management in this country but there's no leadership. It's not about leading them someplace because typically the people that are following you have better answers than you'll have anyway. Your goal is to be out past where they are and have this vision and stay above the details. So you really can't keep them on target, but they continue to keep you focused.

It's not just getting out there and commanding your troops to follow you, setting these incredibly tough goals, and if they don't work out firing them. That's where most leadership is. No matter how they phrase it, that's how it's done. And I think that's incredibly unproductive and inefficient. A leader says: who are you, what do you want, how can I help you get that? Are our goals in congruence, because if they are not both of us lose. As long as the goals are in congruence it's going to be a wonderful match and you're going to succeed with it. But if they're not, check it out, find out why not, and if they need to move on it's a blessing to allow them to go do something else, so long as it's done with love, where they see it in your eyes that this is not punishing — it's not being judged wrong. It's a bad match.

A leader says, "It's my responsibility for putting you in a position like that and I apologize. It shouldn't have gotten there. It should have been better." I think we're here to be of service. You don't have to be perfect — when troops see their leaders vulnerable and open and really doing the best they can they will forgive them in most instances.

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You can visit Bill's website at www.billkarlson.com. Or click here to learn more about his book, Get Top Dollar in a Job You Love.