How to Be an Irreplaceable Crisis Leader

Several months into a world health crisis and many leaders still don't seem to have it right! What about you? Paul Simkins, The Values Coach, talks about leaders who have gotten it really wrong, some who have gotten it right, and how you can employ four skills to become that irreplaceable leader in any crisis.

Plus, a recipe for Smoked Prime Rib this holiday! You can find the recipe, and many more, on the Smoke and Ash Facebook group or by emailing paul@BoldlyLead.com.

You can get a copy of Paul's eBook 15 Innovative Ways to Show Employees You Care and Not Break the Bank by emailing him at paul@BoldlyLead.com.

Join the discussions at our Podcast Facebook group here.
Learn more about Paul Simkins on his website.

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Transcript

Producer: 0:00

The tech leaders toolbox podcast is brought to you by Paul Simkins and the Boldly LEAD program, focusing on helping tech leaders like you, and the frustration of low performing teams, and losing excellent employees, so they can increase productivity by 50%. Go home on time, and sleep better at nights.

Paul Simkins: 0:23

Hello, and welcome to the tech leaders toolbox. I'm Paul Simkins. And we're here because how you lead today determines how your team succeeds tomorrow. This is Episode 48 of the podcast and we're already several months into a pandemic, we're on the second wave as a matter of fact, and yet, there still seems to be a lot of leaders who really aren't sure how to go forward at this point. If you employ the right skills during this situation, you can be known as the irreplaceable leader during any crisis your organization faces. We'll also talk today about making a smoked prime rib for the holidays. Are you ready? Let's go. Well, I read recently about a study from Deloitte, that showed that 47% of companies felt prepared to handle a high level crisis, less than half of the companies they surveyed, felt like they were prepared to handle a high level crisis. Now along with that, I read another study from the company called a light, which does employee situate solutions. And what they found from theirs is that what employees say they really want from their leaders during COVID-19, or any other kind of crisis, is they want reliable communication from them. They want to know where they stand, they want to know where the organization stands. They want to know what's going to be happening going forward. And yet from that, they found that only 42% said that their company actually does that effectively. So think about that, again, significant less than half say that their company handles communication effectively during the pandemic right now. And lots of companies all over are blowing it in terms of how they handle the pandemic crisis, how they handle their employee engagement, and how they handle their employees in general. In fact, a friend of mine, john Hyman, who is a an employment attorney in Ohio, and you're going to hear about him in a future episode, I've got them lined up and you're gonna love hearing from him. on his blog, he actually does a worst employer example, worst employer of the year examples. Every year, he holds a vote. He just closed out the voting recently. And he's got some great examples of how companies are blowing it during the covid 19 crisis for and here's four examples from there. This is this stuff really stood out to me and one really close because it's only about two hours away from me. Well, the first one, this one's not close to me. A manager of a Tyson plant out in the Midwest actually started a betting pool with all of the other managers on how many of their employees would test positive for COVID-19. Start started a betting pool didn't do anything in terms of how do we prevent this? How do we make our people safe instead, they started a betting pool on how many employees would test positive for COVID-19. This is the one that's close to home to me. This is in Marion County, Florida, which is up near Gainesville Ocala area. And Billy woods, who's the sheriff of Marion County for bids his employees from wearing facemask when they're doing their work, and also anyone who enters the sheriff's department facilities were forbidden from wearing a facemask during the middle of a COVID-19 crisis. And one of the things you need to know is Florida right now is one of the leaders in terms of COVID-19 infections. And yet through all of this, he still maintains this by the way, he loosened up a little bit. He told the deputies that they would be able to wear a mask if they were going to be encountering somebody who might have COVID during the course of their job, but otherwise had to keep the mask off. And that people who came into their facilities would have to take them off for a security camera picture but then could put them back on but still over All he has a no mask policy. And again, has shown through his comments, both public and private, that he really doesn't care. And he thinks that anybody who's worried about this COVID stuff is nothing but a whiner. There's also a national restaurant chain that has told their employees, they will cut their pay by 12 $100. When they receive the stimulus checks that we're going to be sent that were sent out several months ago, that they were going to basically absorb that 12 $100 in employee pay, because they were getting a stimulus check from the government. And that's a national restaurant chain, by the way. And then finally, there was the manager who actually fired a work from home mother, because during zoom video conference calls with him, he didn't like hearing her children in the background during those calls. Now, again, she could not afford to put them in daycare or any other kind of care schools were out, there was nothing she could do with them. And yet, he insisted during that time, he would not accommodate the schedule and not change schedule so that they could meet when the kids were napping or anything like that. And yet, he would complain when he could hear the kids in the background and eventually fired her as a result of that. So again, lots of examples of organizations that are not handling most of this very well. A lot of communication breakdown, a lot of employees that really aren't sure of their status. And a lot of employees that really aren't sure of the positions within the organization on the pandemic overall. But also in the midst of that, the good news is there are organizations that are handling it pretty well. In the New York Times, there was an article early on about what Microsoft did from the get go, in order to respond to this. First of all, they heard the news early on, back in February, as the crisis first started up, and they immediately went into action. They were first of all an early adopter of work from home. First, they made it optional for employees to be able to work from home. And then they eventually told all their employees, we want you to work from home. And they're still I mean, they went from their main campus having something like I think it was something like 23,000 or 33,000, that normally came into the campus down to about 5000. So greatly reduced that they placed all their internal communications, they formed a well first of all, they formed a response team within their organization, a COVID-19 response team. They created constant communication, internal communications about COVID-19 with all of their employees. And they not only put them on their internal site available for everyone, but they put them on their external side as well. They also reached out to other tech businesses like apple and other organizations, other tech companies that are in the area, in terms of formulating together, how they would all respond to this. And they emphasize throughout all their communications with their employees, that their decision making would be based on science. And not on rumor. They kept the communication consistent and constant. So say what you can't want about Microsoft, but they so far they have handled this situation. Well. Another example is my good friends at pangolin laser systems. And you've heard from William Benner, the CEO of pangalan, before on one of my episodes, and you're going to hear from him and his chief operating officer, Justin Perry, in one of my future episodes, again, because they have done some really great things. And you'll hear more in depth about this. But one of the things they did was they made a commitment based on their corporate values, that they were not going to lay anyone off and they communicated that right away to their employees. that hey, we don't know where things are going from this. But we are going to commit to finding ways to keep everybody around to keep everybody busy, and to be as productive as we can. And they have done some tremendous things, including really taking the opportunity to double down on production, to double down on investing in their employees and finding creative ways. To keep everybody working even in the manufacturing part of their company, during this time, and they have not lost a single employee, they have been prepared to meet the needs of organizations, while many others in their business have actually scaled back, they've doubled down and have repeated their commitment to their employees. And then there is gravity payments, and their CEO Dan price and you can do a quick Google search on him and find out one of the things one of the things that Dan price is well known for and made big news for was he actually created a$70,000 minimum wage for all of his employees. The lowest paid person in the company makes$70,000 a year. And again, we're talking administrative assistant, everybody, minimum wage is $70,000 per employee. And to do that he actually cut his own pay from multiple millions down to $70,000. so that he could meet that need. And one of the things he did during that the beginning of the COVID, because again, he was faced with Yo, am I gonna know business dropped greatly, because what gravity payments does is they handle payment systems for small businesses. And they were faced with is all of this every shame thing shut down. They were losing business, and they were looking at Gee, am I going to have to lay employees off? He was agonizing over that. So what did he do? He went to his employees, and ask them, What do you think we ought to do. And what happened was the employees rallied around, most of them offered said, I will take a pay cut, let's not get rid of anybody, let's look for ways to keep moving forward, we'll take some temporary pay cuts, and many of them did. And they were able to recover from that. And in fact, business is picked up again. And back in the fall business started picking up again, he was actually able to pay them all back on the pay that they went that they for went during back in the spring and into the summer, he was able to pay them all back. But he went to his employees. And he asked for their help. And he got it. And because of that he got engagement from his employees, they knew where they stood. And they knew what was going on. And he kept that communication open with him. And that helped him to succeed. So again, there are people that are doing this, right. And we all have that ability to do it right. We have to employ the right kinds of skills, we cannot let this be a numbers game. We cannot simply let it be a matter of the spreadsheet, or let it be a matter of what the standard practices say in terms of shrinking down during a crisis. In fact, one of my mentors, john Maxwell says that one of the ways that you can succeed is that when everybody else contracts you expand. And that's part of what you want to look at here. But when you expand, you want to look at expanding in terms of engaging your workforce, getting your workforce involved in the commitment to help the company continue to survive and thrive during the pandemic crisis. And you have to look at allowing them because think about this, as much as you're going through during all of this crisis. Well, many of your employees are going through the same things the same type of things, you may be going through school shutting down, or having forcing your your kids to have to take school online from home, which you'll find that probably most of them hate it. And the ones that don't hate it like it because it means they can pretend to be in class when they're playing video games or something. But you're having to deal with that. So you got to sit there you got to be on top of that. You got to be on top of the workplace and all the distractions that you can have at home, unless you're one of those really talented people that have the ability to shut everything else out and focus entirely on the matter right in front of you right now. And you're a rarity. I'll tell you this. You have a lot of distractions to deal with. And it saps your willpower during the day. And, and really you're going to find if you haven't been experienced in this, you're lucky most of us What we're experiencing with this work from home environment is at the end of the day, we're exhausted, absolutely exhausted, because it just takes so much time and energy to try and focus on what we're doing. And then when you hit holidays, when you worry about how you're going to pay your mortgage, how you're going to put food on the table, how you're going to provide for your children and keeping them going. It's exhausting. So here's four, irreplaceable crisis leadership skills. If you use these skills, if you hone these skills, practice them on a daily basis with your team, then I guarantee you, you will be the irreplaceable leader during any crisis your organization faces, or anywhere you go from now on, because these are valuable skills that are necessary for helping people and organizations get through a crisis. And the first one you'll want to look at, is you want to have empathy. And remember the manager who fired the work from home mother, the story I told you a little bit earlier. Yeah, well, he lacked empathy. He did not have a feel for what that employee was going through. Having to work from home and focus on and and especially a mom, who's probably has to worry about cooking dinner has to worry about doing laundry has to worry about cleaning up in the house. And especially when you have younger children, they're not as helpful on that. So all of this responsibilities falling on her. She's working from home, it's around her constantly and it is hounding her. And in addition to that, having to find ways to occupy the children, to keep them from getting in the way. And then on top of that, is to have a boss who is sitting there berating you for the very things that you're already beating yourself up about. Having empathy means that you don't have to feel exactly what someone else is feeling. You simply have to try to understand what they may be feeling. That's what empathy is all about. And when you can understand what they may be feeling, you are much more likely to be accommodating, you're much more likely to look for solutions, where everyone wins, you're much more likely to look for ways to relieve that employee instead of increasing their stress. So how do you show that empathy and ask questions. And when you ask the questions, try not to ask them in a way that sounds accusatory, or sounds even like you're getting ready to, to chastise them and ask questions to satisfy your curiosity. And in fact, that's a great phrase is. So Mary, I'm just curious. How is it? are you how are you able to keep the kids engaged during the day? How is that affecting you? What are the things that are getting in your way during the day? How is that making you feel? Are we putting too much on you? What can we do to help relieve that pressure?

Unknown: 18:48

How can I help?

Paul Simkins: 18:51

Those are signs of empathy. And again, don't just say them to say them, you need to say them and you need to meet them. And you need to be prepared to do the things that you can do to help relieve that stress on them. Another key trait here. Another skill is sensitivity. And again, example of the manager who lacked it. The manager of the Tyson plant in the Midwest, they're the one who kept the betting pool on how many employees would get COVID would be diagnosed with COVID-19. Totally lacked sensitivity. There were probably already some employees that were getting it. There were probably a lot of other employees that were placed in danger as a result of that. And if the best thing that you can do is to raise a betting pool on how many are going to end up with it. Yeah, a lot totally lacking in sensitivity. You have to be aware of the situation, the stress that this is putting on people People who are losing loved ones, perhaps,

Unknown: 20:04

to COVID-19.

Paul Simkins: 20:08

People who are faced with myriad, a myriad of financial and other crises in their lives, you need to be sensitive to what is going on in the lives of your people. discernment is another key skill. Again, here's the example where that Sheriff of Marion County, Billy Woods lacks discernment. Because he was reading in his own interpretation of the world as he saw it, and many others lack it as well. And you'll see that a lot. Now. discernment means that you got to know how to sift through fact, and fiction. And you have to be willing to expand your field of knowledge. beyond just what jives with your own world view. You know, one of the things I've often said about statistics, is you can find any kind of statistic you want. If you simply grab the right sets of data, you can find any statistic statistic you want, that's going to back up what you already believe. In fact, there's the old saying about, you know, there's three kinds of lies, you know, there's a bald faced lies, there's white lies, and then there's statistics, you know, it's something like that. You can find facts to back up your worldview very easily. Or again, find somebody who is made up or twisted facts to fit your own worldview. Don't settle for that. settle for what can be verified, settle for what can be substantiated. What can be held to be factually true and consistent and reinforced by multiple sources, including those you don't necessarily agree with. In fact, you'll find in most cases, anything that is factually correct. While there may be literal interpretations of those facts, as you go along, you'll find the basic facts will be consistent between multiple sources, and that's a good sign that it is fact and not fiction, you need to be able to discern that and not just rely on anything that jives with your worldview. And a good example of that is again, where Microsoft said right off the bat, we're gonna rely on science. And not innuendo, not rumor. We're gonna rely on science to guide us here. And then finally, the last one you want is we talked and we talked about this earlier, and Microsoft did it and all these others, the ones that were doing it right, this is what they were doing, they were communicating. And we've hit on this theme before they were communicating consistently with their people. They were communicating and the communication they did were consistent. They were communicating constantly with them, keeping them updated on what was going on. And most importantly, they kept it open, open communication. So that it was two way and they could receive input that helped them guide their decisions. So those four irreplaceable crisis, leadership skills, empathy, sensitivity, discernment, and communication. And if you will practice those skills on a daily basis with your team, you will become the irreplaceable crisis leader. We'll be back in a moment.

Producer: 24:08

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Paul Simkins: 24:37

All right, I'm excited today for this portion again where we always talk about outdoor cooking because I am a huge outdoor cooking fan. And I invite you to come out we have a Facebook group called smoke and ash where we talk about all kinds of outdoor cooking and I invite you to come out there and join us and I always share a recipe during this portion of the show and now or cooking recipe. And I've, of course, got another one today. And I always make them available also on that smoke and ash Facebook group. Or if you want the recipe and you're not a big Facebook fan, you can simply email me at Paul at boldlylead.com. And I'll be glad to send the recipe along to you. And this one just in time for Christmas, think about doing a smoked prime rib. This is fabulous if you do this, right. So for a smoke prime rib, what you're gonna want to do for this is of course you want a rib roast, you either a prime rib roast or standing rib roast, you're going to get that you're going to want to order it from the butcher. So again, order it as early as you can. By the time you hear this, it may you can try but if you do it this day, but if you wait, you may be a little bit too late in time for the holidays, but uh, you want a standing rib roast, or prime rib roast. And you want to most people do one of two things with it, they either leave the bones in, but then they have the butcher do what they call frenching the bones, which is basically removing and pushing back some of the fat on the bones, so that part of the rib bones are exposed. That's one way of doing it. The other way is a lot of times they'll have the butcher remove the bones, and then tie them back on. Now if you've removed the bones, why do you want them tied back on? Well, it's attractive, but also by keeping the bones in that as you cook it, you get part of the flavor from the bones and the marrow into the meat. I always like I always prefer to smoke meats with the bone in because the bone lad flavor to it. So you're going to get your rib roast. And in this case, you're going to do a barbecue rub for it a dry rub. And what I recommend you do is look for a savory type of rub. You don't want a lot of sweet on this. For this kind of for a standing for prime rib roast, you don't want a lot of sweet, so avoid rubs that have a lot of sugar in them. Instead, opt for rubs that are going to have a lot of garlic. And perhaps a lot of time and other herbs like that savory types of herbs. That is going to give you a much better flavor in the long run. For your sweet you can look at adding sauce to it later. And we'll talk a little bit about that. So you're gonna rub down your prime ribbon. Again, what I like to do is rub it down the night before and wrap it in plastic wrap, let it sit overnight, take it out to come up to room temperature before you put it in the smoker and you'll sprinkle a little bit more rub on it then, for the wood for your smoker if you're going to use a wood smoker that requires wood either a pellet grill or just using wood chunks or wood chips. Look at using pecan wood. pecan wood will add a real nice flavor to this hickory wood do well as do is do good as well. But pecan wood, add a real nice flavor to the prime rib roast. And so again, you're going to put it in your smoker at about 225 degrees, it's going to need to smoke in there, since you want you want is you want kind of medium rare in the middle, usually with a prime rib, so that you can count on doing about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes per pound for the roast. But you're going to want to cut it short. So if it's a six pound rib roast, and that's kind of low, but I'm just giving you that as an example, with a six pound rib roast, then you're looking at eight to 10 hours for it to be totally done. Cut that short by an hour or two to get medium rare in the middle. And fact a lot of times what people do is just put it on the smoker for about two to three hours so that you get a nice smoky flavor into it. And then finish it up for an hour or two in the oven. And you can do that as well as after the sauce, a couple of possibilities their use, I would like to use like a tomato based barbecue sauce that's got a little bit of sweetness to it. And then what you can always do like traditionally a lot of people use a horseradish sauce with prime rib, you can actually dump a little bit of horseradish and mix it in with the barbecue sauce and used and serve that. And that'll give you that nice contrast between the spicy and the sweet as well when when you serve up the prime rib roast. That's it a smoked prime rib and again, if you want the recipe to that, you can go out to the smoke and ash Facebook group, and I'll have it out there or just email me at Paul at boldly lead.com Alright, so this week we talked about being the irreplaceable Leader by employing the four critical leadership skills of empathy, sensitivity, discernment and communication. Hey, by the way, you know, we do this for free and I'd like to ask a favor from you for this holiday season. I want to get more people out here to hear the podcast and hopefully if you're benefiting from it, let's share it with others. So please, if you're listening to this on an app of any kind, like Apple podcast or anything like that, leave us a five star review and a recommendation and share this with your friends so that we can build our audience. I'd really appreciate it. I'm hoping you have a great holiday season folks. We will be back again next week. Until then, go out and be the leader. You were meant to be!