610: Jeff Janssen - The Commitment Continuum, Walt Disney, Holding Others Accountable, Team Captains, & The 7 Secrets of Successful Coaches

27:10But if we really want to be successful and compete against the best people in our industry or the best people in our conference or nation or whatever it may be, we've got to go at a much higher level. That's a great thing. Dawn Plitzwhite is the coach at Minnesota Women's Basketball. And as she's taken over Minnesota now, she's trying to elevate them into the top half and even more so in that conference. So what she's done is she's looked at the stats of the top half teams and what they're shooting and what they're holding defenses to. So she's got these metrics now that says, Hey, if we're going to be one of the top half teams, this is the level of performance that we've got to do in our games, but then we got to bring that into practices too.

27:54And into the weight room, this is the standard. If you want to be at this level, this is the standard we all have to compete to. And we all have to hold each other accountable to. You mentioned you would put those people who are in the committed and compelled boxes into leadership roles, whether it's on a sports team or in the business world. And you've also written a manual about holding people accountable. And I think that's certainly what leaders, that's a part of a leader's role is holding others accountable, teammates, sometimes even their boss, as well as others within the organization. But you've also written about the fact that people don't necessarily enjoy this element.

28:37Some do, but that's probably a smaller group. But a lot of people, they can hold themselves to a high standard, but they don't always love what goes into maybe their friends with the people and it makes it odd or it makes it tough, but people don't always enjoy this element. What are some ways you help these committed and compelled people become good or great at holding others accountable. Yeah. And just to reinforce that fact, one of the things that we do with our leadership academies, with our college athletic teams, is we do a 360 degree evaluation of the leaders. And I can almost guarantee you for most of the leaders, holding their teammates accountable is usually the skill that their teammates and their coaches and they themselves say is the toughest one for them.

29:27So it's exactly why I wrote the how to hold people accountable manual because most people don't like those conflict situations. I don't really like them myself. So I probably wrote this manual for me too, to get some of this out of it. And what I did is I put together seven different steps that if you can put in these layers or these steps that are there, you then have the credibility, the foundation, the basis to do that. And the last step is enforcing the standard. And I think so many people think, okay, if I'm going to hold people accountable. I have to go right to step seven and I got to let people know they aren't getting the job done and you've got to do more and you suck.

30:06And they just go in this negative. I've got to go to step seven. And I'm like, no, you know what? If you invest the time to put in the first six steps and those are things like, okay, what is our vision overall? And how does this behavior line up with this? It goes back to, am I embodying the standards myself? If I'm not doing that. I've got zero credibility to tell somebody else to work hard when I, as I said, am coming in late, taking two-hour lunches and knocking off at 4.30. I have to look at what are the standards that we have set for our team. Have we really clearly set those? Have we communicated those effectively to people?

30:47And have we gotten their buy-in and understanding of those standards? If we don't have any of that, you can't tell people, hey, you were supposed to do this. They'd be like, nobody really mentioned that to me, especially if you're a newcomer or a first year freshman coming in. That's one of the things that we do is have the senior leaders sit down and say, these are the expectations and standards when you come into this program. So people are clear about what those are. And then, as I said, I think you have to have that metric system, that way to evaluate these things. So have we hit the standard?

31:20Did we allow Ohio State to shoot above 40 % against us or did we force them to take some tough shots and not do that? So not only do we have these performance metrics, we also have behavioral metrics of did we meet our behavioral standards? Did we sit in the first three rows of class? Did we introduce ourselves to our instructor ahead of time? Did we let them know we have a trip coming up and that we would be missing their class? So all of these expectations are clearly communicated. And then I think one of the biggest areas of holding people accountable that's ignored is not only calling people out when they don't hit the standard, but praising people when they meet and exceed the standard.

32:06the old John Wooden. Hey, he gave three positive instructional comments to every one criticism that he gave. Hopefully leaders are calling out the good stuff when people do meet the standard and exceed it three times as much as they're letting people know, hey, you didn't meet it. And I love the phrase, we're not calling you out, we're calling you up. We're calling you up to this standard that we clearly communicated, that everyone bought into, that the leaders themselves are doing, that we know if we hit the standard, we position ourselves to get to the level that we want to. So it's all of these important steps that I think have to be thought through, put in place, embraced, lived before we have that credibility.

32:55And then you can say, you know what, one of the things we said is that going to class regularly was going to be an important thing. And we spelled that out. We talked about that at the beginning of the year, and we said that was our minimum expectation. And right now you've skipped two classes. So I'm not calling you out for me personally. I'm calling you out on behalf of the team and the things you agreed to, because this is the level we need to get to where we want to go and have the reputation on campus that we want to have. Wow. Okay. You mentioned seven steps. The last one, enforcing the standard, but the first ones, let me make sure I got some of these.

33:30Clearly understanding what the vision is. What's our vision? Am I embodying the standards myself? Have we clearly set standards? Are the expectations clearly set? There's performance and behavioral metrics. Again, clearly communicated expectations, praise people when they meet the standard. We're not calling you out. We're calling you up. And did we get buy-in? Did we get buy-in to those? Do people embrace those standards? Do they understand why that standard is in place? It's not just, I'm going to come up with this standard, or this is my way of things that need to be done. This is like, okay, well, if we want to be one of the top half of the teams in the Big 10, we then need to be having performance levels at the top half of the team of the Big 10.

34:16So this is why this standard is set, because this is what it will take to get there. So it's not an imposing of the standards, but it's a, oh, this is what we need to collectively do to get to that level. So there's buy-in to it. I love it too, the behavioral part, Jeff. I think that's huge. It's really an all-the-time thing. I recorded yesterday with Anthony Pompliano. I remember when he showed up early and he's really big on being on time or being early. I am too. We both learned that playing football from our coaches. If you're not early, you're late. So on time is late. That type of thing.

34:57by the way, you showed up early to this meeting. And I think that's a discipline thing. I think that also goes into sitting in the first three rows of the classroom, introducing yourself to your teacher, right? People say, well, what does that have to do with winning games? Or what does that have to do with my team? I think it has everything to do with being a part of a team and winning games because all of those little things add up to the big things. And the same Same is true in the business world. You do the basics, the foundational parts right. You show up early. You're prompt. You respect people's time.

35:31You look them in the eye. You shake their hand. You get on the plane to go see them if you need to. Those things, some say, oh, those are just little details. I don't know how that matters. No, that's all part of the standard. That's all part of living up to the standard that all those little details add up to the big stuff that eventually helps you win games. hit the revenue target, exceed whatever goal is set for you. And I think that's a big element too that you talk a lot about, Jeff. Yeah. I mean, I've read a lot about Walt Disney and him going into his parks and there might be a tree with 10 ,000 lights on and Disney notices, oh, you know what?

36:09We've got one light out over there. Let's get that fixed before we open up. And I was fortunate to go on some Disney cruises with my kids and I would be up early morning reading and there would be Disney staff members polishing the railings of all of these different areas. And it was just like, it's that level of detail and that level of just, we're going to put on a great show and these are our standards. And it just kind of reminded me that yes, the best teams understand that the little things are the big things. And if we stop doing those things, or if we stop holding each other accountable to those things, we're going to start to erode within.

36:52Our standards are going to start to fall. And other teams who want it more than we do, they're going to set higher standards. And that discipline, as we know, in stressful situations and pressure situations, that discipline to come up with the right behavior or be in the right place at the right time, with sport being a game of inches, if you weren't where you needed to be exactly at that right time. I just tweeted out or with X now, Gino Auriemma is the best teams don't practice until they get it right. They practice so much that they know they won't get it wrong. They practice to the level that it becomes an ingrained habit of this is how we're going to respond versus, oh, we got it right.

37:35One out of 10 times. Well, no, that's not going to work against South Carolina when you play them. Hmm. How do you think, Jeff, you get someone like the person who waxes railings or maybe the janitor or the people who do these jobs that are not glamorous for most? maybe they're lower paying potentially manual labor sounds like in a lot of these cases how do you get get people like that to be so committed that they care deeply about those railings looking perfect or about all the trash and the carpet looking great and the bathrooms spotless like how do you build a culture where it goes all the way to that level of the person washing the rails on a Disney cruise.

38:21Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things there. There's one story that triggered as you said that is they were talking to a custodian in a hospital and just spotless rooms. And they said, why do you do this? And he's like, my role is just as important to the surgeons. If I don't have a sterile environment that they're working in within this situation, then these people could get infections that could kill them. So I see my role in this whole thing just as valuable as everyone else's. Now, do I get paid that way compared to the surgeon? No, but I play a valuable part in something that's bigger than me and that is important.

39:05So I think it's really important that you help everyone understand your role is just as important as everyone else's, even though financially you may not get that. I remember one thing when I was with the University of Arizona and their softball program, Mike Andrea was super successful, eight national championships. And the thing that he would always do is make sure that every time they won a national championship, everyone who touched his program in some way was going to get a championship ring because he appreciated them. So the groundskeepers were getting championship rings. The support staff were getting championship rings.

39:43The sports media, the media relations person was getting a championship ring. So the academic advisor, I mean, you name it, anyone who had any kind of impact on his program, whether it was directly on the field or all the myriad of ways that student athletes have to succeed, he made sure that those people got championship rings. And I think that attention to detail on his part and that appreciation for the role that we all played in that, he sent a message that said, you are all valuable in what we are doing. Yes, I mean, certain players were doing great things and he would recruit them there, but everybody had a role that he appreciated.

40:29So I think that appreciation goes a long way as well. So big. Again, we get back to being an effective communicator as the leader, showing care and love for everybody's role and not necessarily saying like, well, these are the MVP. So I'm just going to take care of my MVP or the MVPs of the team. I'm going to the groundskeeper. Hey, thank you. Thank you for making this a beautiful place, a great place for us to play. In fact, we just won a championship and here's your ring. hey, thank you for helping us, academic coordinator. You're a part of this. And I think that's so crucial, man, as the leader does it themselves.

41:11The leader shows how much they care and love for everybody on the team and that they highlight those roles. Did you hear the same one? And this may have been made up, but I think it was a janitor in Houston for NASA. And they're going around asking questions and it was like 1965. And they said, Hey, what do you do? And this is a guy who's a janitor. And he said, I'm helping put somebody on the moon. And it's the same type of the fact that he understood, yeah, I'm not the scientist or the engineer. I'm cleaning up after those guys. I'm helping put somebody on the moon. And it's like that type of mentality where everybody takes pride in their work.

41:51Everybody tries to live up to the standard, regardless of how much they're paid or if they're written about in the newspaper, any of that type of thing. And I think as a leader, those are the things we need to be thinking about within our businesses. How am I being an effective communicator and clearly communicating to each person the value that they bring to this team and why their role is so important? That's how you get the people taking great pride in making sure those railings on the Disney Cruise are spotless and look beautiful while you're sitting out there in the morning reading a book.

42:24I think that's so cool, man. Yeah, exactly. And just to go back, yeah, that same janitor that I talked about in the hospital, he felt like he was saving lives. So it's the same thing. I am a part of something that's so much bigger than all of us. And I am a vital part to that. And the rest of the world may say, well, you're just a janitor, you're just a custodian. And this person's like, no, I am doing something. It's the old cathedral story with the bricklayers. Are you laying bricks? I'm building a wall or I'm building a cathedral. If you can help people see they're contributing something that is long lasting, that's meaningful, that's bigger than themselves, then people I think will be willing to be committed and compelled because they know they're making a difference.

43:08They know their work matters. I want to focus on one more manual before we run for this first conversation, Jeff, the team captain's leadership manual, whether it was sports or business, I feel like when I do the compare and contrast of the most effective teams, the teams that won and that I think did big things together versus the ones that didn't. And I've been on winning and losing teams in sports and in business. I feel like they were player led teams empowered by great coaches, but player led teams where The players held each other accountable. The players set the standards and the players got after it.

43:45And by players, I don't just mean sports. It's also happened in the business world, especially when I was leading sales teams at LexisNexis and Elsevier Clinical Solutions. And to me, that's a big element of this. And you go deep on this stuff. So if we could start high level on the team captain's leadership manual, this is like the complete guide to developing team leaders whom coaches respect and teammates trust. Big word there. Can you go deeper on the team captain's leadership manual and what that entails? Yeah, I mean, really, it came about because I heard all of these coaches kind of saying, we just don't have good leadership this year.

44:20Or when they did have those successful seasons, as you said, you know what? This was a player-led team. I could kind of sit back because I knew they were going to set the standard. I knew they weren't going to let people get crazy on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights. I knew that they were fully bought in. And they weren't going to let crap happen in the locker room or outside of it as well. So it started to look at and saying, you know, there's nothing really that develops them. I always talk about it as the magic eight ball theory of leadership development. A coach would go in and say, are we going to have good leaders this year and just shake the magic eight ball and leave it totally to chance and just cross their fingers.

44:58Oh, I hope they step up and lead. It's like, no, Mike Fox, who was the baseball coach at Carolina said, hey, you know what? But my best seasons occurred when my best athlete was also my best leader. So what we should do is create a leadership academy, which Carolina did 21 years ago now, that we put in those younger athletes who were really talented. And we said, we're going to develop you much like the minor leagues develop people. We're going to develop you over time so that by the time you're a junior or senior, you may be that best athlete and best leader. And you're going to have a huge ripple effect on everyone else.

45:34So I started to put together this program and it's 10 module program. The first part of it, if you're going to lead people, which goes back to my first question before the commitment continuum, can you lead yourself first? Because if you can't lead yourself, you're going to have no credibility, trust, respect with any of the people that are supposed to follow you. So we've got to make sure we look at, as I said, commitment is one area we look at, are you committed or compelled? Because if you're not there, you're probably not going to have your team following you. Composure, when the stuff hits the fan, and we know the stuff is going to hit the fan in athletics.

46:09We know it's going to hit the fan in business. We know it's going to hit the fan in life. Are you someone who can maintain your own poise and composure and not let that situation depress you or just have you go crazy or mad? Can you roll with the punches? Because when crap happens, we look at our leaders and are they freaking out? Oh God, and then we got to freak out. This must be really bad. Our leaders saying, Hey, you know what? Yeah, it's not what we preferred, but here's our plan. Here's how we're going to get through that. So composure is a big thing that we teach kids. If you want to be a leader, especially when things aren't going well, you have to step up and do that.

46:46Confidence is a huge one. You know that as an athlete, confidence for a lot of people goes up and down depending upon, was I successful? Was I not? It's a big roller coaster. So we talk about you have to maintain your own confidence and you got to find four sources of confidence that when you're struggling with it, you can go to these not only for yourself, but you can use these for your team. And then the fourth one for leading by example is character. People look at what you do and they decide, can I trust you? Are you going to do the right thing? Are you going to do the harder right thing or the instead of the easier wrong that's there.

47:24And I think as I tell coaches a lot of times, if you look at a coach's commitment, confidence, character, and composure, a lot of adults struggle with that, let alone, you know, whether it's a high school kid you're dealing with or a college kid or even a professional kid, a lot of them are going to struggle with those. But we've got to have our commitment, our confidence, our character, our composure, at least at a solid enough level that people then are going to see that and respect that. So we spend our first level, we have an emerging leaders program. We spend the first part of that really teaching kids, hey, if you're going to lead, you got to lead the person sitting in your own chair first.

48:03And that's enough of a challenge for a lot of kids there. Then once they can do that, which that takes some time and obviously steps forward, steps backward in that. now they have the foundation credibility to open up their mouth and be respected because teammates see, hey, you're leading yourself effectively enough. And now what we do is we break that into kind of what I talked about before, that encourager. When you see good commitment, confidence, character, and composure from your teammates, we're going to call that out. Hey, great job. And when you don't see that, then we have to have an enforcer and say, hey, we need more from you.

48:40Or I know you're frustrated, but pouting on the end of the bench, that's not really good for you. That's not helpful for our team. You become a distraction. We've got to have you handle those situations better. And then we go into things like servant leadership. If you're going to be a leader, it can't be about you, your stats, your social media posts, all that. You've got to understand what's going to be best for this group. You've got to build the confidence of other people. You've got to take people from different backgrounds, different personal goals, different personalities, and you got to try to meld them into a common goal and what you're trying to accomplish.

49:17You've got to, when they're having rough days, you got to figure out how do I refocus them back onto the task at hand? And then last but not least, as I said, that enforcer role that we talked about before, that how to hold people accountable manual that so many people struggle with. You have to, when you don't have the behavior that you need or the standards being met. You got to figure out ways that are going to call people up to those standards and let them know we need more from you. So that is a whole other training thing that we do with people to help them then not just lead themselves, but now how do I lead a team?

49:54And then we've got a whole culture manual as well too. How do we work with the coaches so that we build this kind of culture that people want to be a part of and people thrive in? So it is a layered process that, as you know, takes time and takes an investment versus just, oh, I hope we have good leadership this year. I hope we have a good culture this year. It's like, no, it's the same thing with your physical skills or with football plays. You can't just show up on game day and say, well, I hope our plays work today when you haven't even run any of them in a practice setting. Man, I would have killed for this when I was in college.

50:30I was probably a little bit too immature to fully be committed, but I hope that I would have looking back. But not only because it would have helped me be a better teammate and team captain of my football team and probably helped us perform better, but it would have really helped me early in my life. I think this podcast has played a huge role in helping, but I didn't have any of that type of stuff. And maybe it just wasn't as common. It certainly wasn't where we went. There wasn't any leadership meetings. It was just strictly, we're going to watch film. We're going to get ready for the next game.

51:06We're going to practice. We're going to lift weights. And it was just all that. And I feel like times have changed. I feel like coaches are much more astute when it comes to developing their people, to caring about their culture, to developing leaders, to being much more intentional by bringing in somebody like Jeff Jansen to say, hey, help me work with my team. help me develop leaders as opposed to just saying, wow, we got a great, we got Tim Tebow this year. We're good, you know, or whatever. And I think that's because most of us need it. I'm curious, how receptive are 18 to 22 year olds when you or your team come in and body language, does it take some time to win them over?

51:49Are they initially skeptical? Oh God, I just want to go eat food and watch a movie. What's it like from a receptive standpoint with these college athletes? Yeah, I think the thing that we've done is we've made this opportunity, this leadership academy, a privilege that they get selected for, that they can apply to. And they have to say, this is why I feel like I would be a good fit. So this is an honor that they get to do. It's a get to versus a have to, to go back to what I talked about there before. And then I think what we really do is we make this so relevant to their lives, to the things they're struggling with, to the teammates that maybe aren't all bought in and how do I get them bought in or to the conversations that are happening in the locker room that are kind of going in the wrong direction or could be trashing a coach and they're like, this isn't helping us at all.

52:44So we make it so relevant and practical to the challenges that they're immediately dealing with, giving them real world strategies that other athletes have used. And then I think the other thing that so many of them see is, boy, if I can go and learn these things now and come up with these skills and be able to put these on the resume and have a 360 degree evaluation done by my team and by my coaches and create my own leadership development plan. And I have so many kids say in their interview, they spend half their interview time talking about their leadership academy experience, the 360 that they had done.

53:28And most employers are saying, our CEO hasn't even had a 360 done. And you had that done at 20 years old and you've got your own leadership development plan and you know your strengths and this is how you're working on them. It just blows employers away. So that's the other thing is not only do they see the immediate relevance and impact of working on these things, but they also see, hey, this is going to help me get a job. And this is, as you talked about at the beginning, this is going to help me in a family situation. This is going to help me in a church situation, a nonprofit, whatever it is.

53:59It's going to help me deal with people. And guess what? We're going to be doing that our entire lives. That's for sure. man, I would love to hire a kid who's been through all that and could speak to it. And like with excitement in their eyes, like you are. Yeah, of course. It blows employers away because they're like, my manager hasn't done that. My CEO hasn't done that. And here's a 20 year old or 22 year old kid coming in and they've had all this training and they have this self-awareness and they know they've applied these leadership things in a highly competitive setting. And they've gotten feedback on it from other people.

54:33this worked, this connected, and you know what? You tweak this a little bit, or you try to develop a better relationship with us, we'll respond better. So now they're educated and they're equipped. How many teams are you guys working with? College teams? Yeah. Carolina was the first school 21 years ago to really start a comprehensive leadership academy. So through the years then, we've had various schools from Stanford to Michigan. We've got it now in high schools, And I've done something also where I called lead the leaders, where I will train usually athletic directors or coaches at the high school level or at other colleges who can then implement this curriculum with people as well.

55:15So, you know, it's we've had boy, we've had at least probably 70 or 80 schools that have done our complete entire leadership academy. and it always depends upon who kind of the ad is as you know if there's an ad change or somebody goes then hey maybe this isn't the priority it was for the other the other people but you know carolina's been one now that with 21 years lehigh university they've got a great person there julia marie they've used our curriculum for 16 years with all their athletes so yeah it's something that if if leadership is a priority you can't just do that magic eight ball thing you've got to implement it into your culture and have a systematic process to teach it.

55:59Love it. Jeff, you think about all of the amazing leaders that you've gotten to work with over the years. I'm curious, what have you found to be some of the commonalities among those leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time? Yeah. So one thing, Greg Dale, who's a great friend of mine, worked at Duke University, unfortunately passed two years ago. We wrote a book together called The Seven Secrets of Successful Coaches. It has since gone out of print. But what we did is we looked at those coaches that just were getting it done at a high level and their athletes respected them and would run through walls for them.

56:41So the ingredients that we found, so we were looking at the Coach K's, we were looking at the Roy Williams, the Mary Wise, who's the volleyball coach at Florida, a lot of different coaches across sports. Marty Schottenheimer is one, knowing your football stuff. He was a guy that we looked at as well. And what they had is number one, they were character-based people, that they were people that athletes could trust and just people that were going to do the right thing. Yes, winning was important to them, but they were going to win in the right way. The commitment level, we've talked about the commitment continuum already, high levels of commitment.

57:23These people were bought in. Yes, sometimes they would probably get too obsessed every now and then, but they were definitely compelled at what they did. They were competent. They knew their X's and O's. They knew how to work with people. They understood how to run a program versus something long-term versus a short-term kind of thing. they cared about their people. They really genuinely, yes, they wanted to win, but they cared about their people as individuals and they stayed connected with them throughout their lifetimes. They would go to their weddings. They would celebrate their birthdays.

58:01Mike André, I mentioned him before. I get a text from him on my birthday and anyone who's ever played or worked with him always gets a text on their birthday. So, there's a caring that transcends that sport. They are a confidence builder. They do, as we've talked about before, they bring out the best in people. They're great communicators, which you mentioned in that communication part is not just talking, but also investing the time to listen. They would have a lot of time where they would really connect and listen to their athletes and not just go to sport. That was one thing I learned from Pat Summitt is you can't go to sport right away.

58:37You got to always find out how they're doing as an individual and how they're doing in classes and all of that. And then there's a consistency. There's a consistency in who they are. There's a consistency in their philosophy, yet they'll adapt. And there's a consistency in how they handle discipline issues that they're not going to have double standards for certain people because they're more talented. So it's those seven characteristics. And we once asked an athlete, hey, out of all those seven, which one would you say is more important? And what we say is those seven basically give credibility to the coach, that you're going to buy into them and you're going to want to follow them and be committed to them.

59:19And the athlete kind of said, well, that's like asking me if I need air or water more to live. I need them both. I need them all. And that's the thing with credible coaches is they're really solid and strong on all seven of them. You You can't be good at five of them and then horrible at two of them. You can't be competent but not care at all about the kids or the people that you're working with because then people see through that. And they're like, well, I'm not going to follow you. So that's what we've done then in developing coaches is taking a look at they get an opportunity. How would your athletes rate you in terms of your character, your competence, your communication, your confidence building, all those seven that we talked about there?

1:00:06And it gives them then a competency-based model that they can look at. And we do 360s with coaches there as well. And it's sometimes eye-opening for them because they think, well, I really thought I was coming across that way. But now when I get this feedback from my team, there's a couple areas I need to work on. Wow, Jeff, this is killer, man. I really appreciate it. I originally read all this at JansonsSportsLeadership.com, right? Is that the place you can send everybody to go? I know there's a lot of front office executives, college coaches, high school coaches that listen to this as well.

1:00:41And I think this is applicable outside of the sports world. It's just a leadership in general thing. So I'm really appreciative of you being here and I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Yeah, that sounds great. I appreciate what you're doing and getting this information out there. I mean, that's really why there was a book. I think it was Leadership Lessons from West Point. And one of the guys was saying, hey, at West Point, I have to prepare people to go stand on a corner in Bosnia or Baghdad or somewhere where all heck is breaking loose. and they have to step up and lead people in a life and death situation.

1:01:19Now, I don't have many life and death situations that I'm working with in college athletics or in the business world, but we never know where these leaders are going to go on. One of the neatest notes I got was from a kid who played volleyball at North Carolina. And she said, guess what? I am now the head of a school in Memphis, Tennessee. and most of these kids' parents have never gone to school, to college before. And I'm having this chance to really give them a vision about you can go to college and give them the schools. And you know what we're using? We're using your commitment continuum here to help kids invest in that.

1:01:58And I'm just getting goosebumps now thinking, yeah, that's what this is all about. Yeah, it's nice to win a national championship and do all those things. but I'm doing this for the impact of 40 or 50 years after they leave college than the four or five years they might be there. That ripple effect, man. That's the juice, isn't it? It is so awesome to see the ripple effect of people that you impact and then the people they impact and the people they impact and they impact. And it just goes on and on and on. So cool, man. All right, Jeff, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate this. My pleasure.

1:02:30Thanks for having me.

1:02:34It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Jeff Jansen. A few takeaways from my notes. The commitment continuum. It goes from resistant to reluctant to existent to compliant to committed to compelled slash obsessed. Now, we first have to do an audit of ourselves. Where are we on that continuum? And then we can do that for each member of our teams. The goal is to get each person closer to becoming committed and compelled. then I really enjoyed Jeff talking about Walt Disney.

1:03:23The little things are the big things. He experienced this firsthand when he went on a Disney cruise and saw the workers polishing the railings on the cruise ship early in the morning. The same is true for the janitor mopping the floor at NASA. There's a story about President John F. Kennedy in 1962. He was at NASA and he asked the janitor what he was doing and the janitor replied, quote, I'm helping put a man on the moon. The leaders, us, we should be praising everyone involved in the mission and celebrate their role and its importance, regardless of if it's seen as the high-paying doctor or the person cleaning the room.

1:04:02And then holding your teammates accountable. This is a great quote. We're not calling you out. We're calling you up. The encourager and the enforcer help raise the standards and encourage others to aim higher. That's the role of the leaders on great teams. We're not calling you out. We're calling you up. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Jeff Jansen. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that, and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and you choose to subscribe to the show, and you rate it hopefully five stars, and you write a thoughtful review.

1:04:47And by doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.