1859 – Embracing Creative Conflict and Leadership with HR Huntsman

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2:14With us right now, it's H.R. Huntsman. H.R., you are a business growth strategist, and you are the founder and president of Leaders Edge. You're found on the web at yourleadersedge.com. HR, thank you so much for joining us. Josh, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, my friend. Absolutely. And, you know, just share the lame joke one more time here because I'm sure you hear it all the time. I'm so delighted I get to chat with HR today. I never hear that about once a day. I'm sorry about that. All right. Well, HR, let's kind of focus on the good, you know, what you do in the world, your impact, who you serve and kind of the, you know, the outcomes you help create for your clients and audiences.

2:58Sounds great, Josh. I'm privileged to work with small, medium-sized business owners, business leaders. They normally come to us when they're two different kinds of companies come to us. Either they've hit a ceiling a little bit and they're wanting to break through and scale, or they're growing rapidly and they're outgrowing their systems and process and leadership infrastructure. And so we get to go in and help them fix all those things, document all that, and help them scale and grow. Yeah. So what's your background? How did you get into this? Well, the longest thing I'll make sure is I grew up in a really broken, dysfunctional home.

3:35And all this pain and death and alcoholism and abuse. And what I wanted to do, I had really good influences in my life in the military. And they challenged me to make good use of all that. So I started my first company at 28, back when I knew everything. And I launched this nonprofit humanitarian organization. And my goal, it sounds sappy, was just to change the world. And we ended up working in five countries around the world. I had 200 staff and I retired a few years ago. And the key to this story is, as much as I love the projects we did, orphanages and water projects and all kinds of stuff around the world, is, Josh, I fell in love with leadership and team development.

4:16And as we scaled and grew from scratch to very large, I learned that that's the key to growth is building great leaders and building great teams and great systems. Otherwise, you can't grow and you're stuck. What Maxwell calls the law of the lid. When I retired from that a few years ago, I knew I wanted to invest in young leaders and pass on that same knowledge and experience. And so now I get to do just that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you bring up some really just looking at your LinkedIn profile, you kind of talk about some really key things. Listen, I think you've kind of laid out my interview right here because there's a lot of things I'd love to kind of pick your brain on.

4:53Sure. Let's illustrate some very common problems that leaders may be facing within their organizations. And one of those might be kind of just exhaustion or tiredness from maybe having to be a little bit too engaged. You know, you call it, you know, handholding or whatever. If there's underperforming team leaders are just feeling like, man, I just I feel like we've covered this. And it just, it seems like, you know, this department or this, you know, manager or director that, you know, is reporting to me, I just, I'm really struggling to pass the baton here. Is that something that you see? And if so, like, how do you kind of create maybe a structure to evaluate and improve that system?

5:42It is the most felt need that we hear all the time. Now, there are underlying factors that we always get at eventually, but the strongest felt need when people come to us is this right here. Accountability, burnout, overwhelmed, putting out fires every day, hand-holding, that's the felt need. And there's two sides to it, Josh, and you know this very well. Side number one is getting those leaders to actually release and empower. So release, delegate, empower other people to carry those things. And the other side, of course, is developing that leadership infrastructure that can pick up the baton that is being handed off, building that trust, those trust levels, the good communication.

6:27It may be skill development. So there's the two sides that we face. So pulling the white knuckle grip of the leaders off of those things, teaching them how to empower, and then, of course, working with their leadership team on growing their skills as well. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I would imagine, again, that's a thing that probably, you know, encounter a lot. Also, too, you know, in working with leaders, how often when you start engaging with someone, do you come or help them come to a conclusion? They're doing way too much or they are doing stuff that they really shouldn't be doing. Right.

7:08It's it's like I think this is a topic we we is in leadership development. And like we talk about this so frequently, and I think so many of us are aware that that is a known problem, a very, very common problem, but yet it still happens. Yeah, this is so great. So here's the normal pattern. H, can you come help us? We need higher accountability and engagement with our team. It's always about the team. The team's not stepping up. Can you help me step up the team? And eventually I put the mirror up to them and I say, ma 'am, sir, you have to look in the mirror because a big part of the root is you right here, not having developed this culture, not having trained well.

7:51So we do have to have the eye-opening, sometimes stinging conversation that the root of this, my friend, my leader friend, it comes back to you and teaching you how to delegate, teaching you how to empower, teaching you how to have these conversations. It's not your team, my friend. I'm afraid it starts with you. And those can be challenging conversations. Yeah. Yeah. The decision making process to engage you or kind of, you know, your sales process that were, you know, just kind of discovery, that sort of thing. That's got to be interesting because, you know, there's there's kind of this. And I'm just curious about this, you know, your observations of you sell them what they want, you give them what they need.

8:36Right. There's some aspect of that. But I'm just curious about your own personal user journey. You know, how quick are you to get blunt about, yeah, okay, you can hire me and we're going to work on you. Whereas what they say is like they might be complaining about lack of engagement. You know, maybe there's personality things that are going on and it could be really easy to say, great, bring me in. We're going to fix those things. How are we going to fix them? Don't worry about it. No, I won't begin a project with a person without having this upfront conversation that authenticity, the humility to look at oneself, the vulnerability to say, I may not be where I need to be.

9:20I won't even begin a project without having that upfront conversation that you realize you own a lot of this. We have to have that conversation. I mean, if you're the leader, culture you have has begun with you. So we have that up front. That's great. Yeah. HR, how do you work with your clients? Like, what does that look like? Like, it's very specifically, like, how does engagement, how long do you work? How do you structure that work together? Yeah. Yeah. We have different levels of programs for wherever the company is. And it could start with just your basic executive level coaching, which is monthly executive coaching, a lot of interrogation, dreams, hopes, how do you get in your own way, pain points, imposter syndrome, all the way up to our big six-figure full deep dive, what we call performance engine.

10:13It's our own developed system to look at the six systems of any business. And we go in and work with the executive team, the leadership team, sometimes the whole staff, and we do deep dives, very, very deep level looks at their foundation system, all their accountability systems, all their processes, organizations, how they run team meetings, KPIs, marketing strategy, value proposition, the whole value chain from start to finish, everything. We look at everything and really help them scale. We document the whole deal, They'll train their team on how to do it. You know, that's a monthly half-day session with the team and then follow coaching with their executive team or executive group.

10:56Sure. And do you work with any particular industries or, like, are there some industries you just have a, well, you're kind of dominating right now or, you know, industries that you have a lot of experience with in particular? Yeah, we're certainly not industry specific. Our belief is that if you work with people, we can help you. It doesn't matter if we know how to make your kind of widgets. The principles of making widgets are the same. But we are very strong in construction, all kind of flavors of construction and law and medical groups. We have, for whatever reason, we've been very attracted to those groups and we do very well with those.

11:35But we have all kinds of industries across the board. So HR, I'm curious, you know, just because this is what you've been doing for quite some time. And obviously you see trends, right, in your world and you see things maybe coming up a lot more than maybe they didn't before. What are some of the biggest challenges that you're hearing, let's say, over the past year that seemed to be a more common refrain? Yeah, this will be shocking to you and all of your leaders. The number one challenge today is the labor market. By far, far and away, it used to be back in the day accountability. And now it's H, can you help us engage better, learn how to lead the new labor culture better?

12:20So, you know, the labor market has more power than it's ever had before, wanting flexibility, hybrid work schedules, all these things. and teaching leaders and teams how to adjust and pivot with each other with these new supply and demand with the labor market is by far the biggest challenge that we are asked about on an almost daily basis. Yeah. So if you were to kind of look in your crystal ball and you were to kind of give an urgent message to business leaders everywhere, whether on that topic, which again, very, very common or others, what would you say, you know, you probably need to be working on this a lot more.

13:00What would that prescription be? Absolutely. 100%. Today's leaders need to be working on creative conflict. At the core of most of this, Josh, is the ability to have good conversations where people are free to disagree, engage, feel heard and valued. I don't care if we're talking about rolling out the next widget or our employee retention program, onboarding, hybrid work schedules. The leader that's going to succeed in the next decade is the leader that has built into his or her culture this culture of creative conflict, being able to have good, hard conversations where people can respectfully disagree.

13:43The leader that can do that is going to win. Yeah. Let's say someone's listening to us right now, they're in leadership with their organization or they're the founder of a company. And if we were to give them a to-do, here's a couple things. I want you to take this back in your organization, or maybe this is something that they need to kind of work on themselves first and kind of do some planning around here. But what's something that someone could do today that might be a very helpful exercise to improve some aspect of their culture or organization or maybe challenges that may or may not be incredibly well known?

14:18Yeah. I guess the first thing I'd ask them to do is interrogate your schedule and see how much time you're doing time telling and how much time you're doing clock building. And my guess, most certainly small and mid-sized business leaders spend most of their day time telling and not clock building. So take a look at how you use your energy. And I bet 95 % of their time is going to be in telling the time, answering the questions, solving the problems, putting out the fires, holding the hands, setting themselves up as the genius in the room. And I'm going to challenge if you're listening to begin to transition and navigate toward being the clock builder who designs and orchestrates this infrastructure that can carry on without your daily presence.

15:09You're building the leadership infrastructure, you're building the systems, the communication protocols, all the accountability feedback loops, all those things are part of clock building. So there's my challenge. Less time telling, more clock building. I love it. I love it. Are you, just out of curiosity, Have you seen any kind of AI-enabled technology being used by leaders maybe to solve problems or, you know, enhance things? You know, I'm just curious what you've been seeing or maybe what you've been advising on. Yeah. So we are big on training. One of our hot-button topics is onboarding and training because 80 % of our attention is linked back to onboarding and training.

15:53So turnover is incredibly expensive. Anywhere from 50 to 200 % of a person's salary is going to, that's what it's going to cost you to turn over a position. So retention is critical to your bottom line, as well as, you know, your, your IP. So the way we see it working and the way we've been encouraging people to use AI to help develop your onboarding and training systems, all those programs and a lot of the companies that we're working with. They're using it well. There's some brand names for AI. Doesn't really matter, I guess. But that's where we're seeing it used really effectively is in the onboarding and training programs.

16:37Yeah, yeah, agreed. And just maybe setting structure, SOPs, you know, things like that. Absolutely. Really kind of documenting processes. I mean, that is something that we've been working on, just kind of formalizing a lot of these things that, you know, which I've got pretty strong opinions on this, right? It's like, if something is being done within the organization, it needs to be documented because, well, I'll let you explain. Yeah. Tell me more about that. Amen, brother. Absolutely. Because that's part of scalability, right? So the average turnover in America right now in every company is about 47 % annually.

17:14So if we're going to maintain momentum and traction, keeping those things documented, so we have just a much easier system to onboard, train, get people up and running quickly. And I mean, the phrase I use now with most of my companies is you're not a let's make up something. You're not a construction company. You're a training company that does construction very well. And so if I can get people to think of themselves as a training organization that does, you know, whatever their thing is, the companies that buy into that have a much, they have a huge advantage over the companies that don't train well at all.

17:55So yes, document everything, document, document, document, because it helps that training and onboarding process so well. And it maintains a high standard of performance across the board, all those things. So Josh, I applaud you for sure. Oh, well, you know, and you're just like, that's a huge paradigm shift. What you just said right there, like about the example with the construction company, you're a training company. We think about like what that means, right? It's like, listen, we were a training company that also does this, but we make the best, you know, in our case, you know, the best consultants in the world internally or coaches in the world, you know, so that we can make a bigger impact in the world.

18:35But it's like shifting that focus to being at the best of the world because of our people, like who we are and the systems and processes that we create. That's really cool. Well, I stole the idea from college sports. I look at these high-level programs. They turn over their staff every two or three years, if you can think about it that way. They turn over their labor every two or three years, and yet they're still competing for national championships all the time. So if they're turning over their staff every three years, it's because their system and their program is so well crafted. So if they can compete for national championships on a regular basis while they're getting new staff all the time, so can we.

19:21So I just, and again, the labor market is what's radically changed since COVID. So if we're having higher turnover than ever, all these leaders have come to me and said, hey, nobody wants to work anymore and turnovers all the time. And people are coming in and out and they're shopping for jobs like we used to shop for restaurants. And I said, okay, stop complaining about it and address how we need to pivot and change. And that's when I began using this. We're no longer a widget company. We're a training company that makes the best widgets in our area. I love it. I love it. The leaders that I can get to buy into that, they just have a leg up on their competitors.

20:00They're going to win. And I tell them, you're not trying to win the widget market. You got to win the labor market. You win the labor market, you'll win the widget market. Yeah. Well, HR, I'm bought in. Nice. I love it. I love it. Okay. So getting back to like how you work with your clients, your website is yourleadersedge.com. Who should be reaching out and how might they know they should have a conversation with you or kind of what's that process for kind of figuring out if it makes sense to work together in some way? Sure. Yeah. I mean, if you have pain points around growth in any way, either stagnant, you feel like there's more there, you're leaving potential on the table, reach out.

20:46If you're growing rapidly and you need a really good infrastructure and architecture to scale that growth, reach out. I mean, these are the companies we want to work with. They have the humility to say, I want to gather a great rope team around me, a great team around me, have that kind of authenticity and humility. You want to grow, you want to treat people well, you want to build something for the future. That's a great fit for us. Excellent. And so when they go to your website, what do they do? The best thing to do is actually reach out to me on my email. You can go to the website. I love personal connections, so don't hesitate to email me, hr at yourleadersedge.com.

21:24on the website. There's buttons there of getting started and I'll just link to my calendar, connect with me personally, and we'll have a chat. I'm a pretty informal guy. I'm old school. I love personal connections. So reach out to me in that way and we'll get started. Well, you and me both, HR. HR Huntsman, again, your website is yourleadersedge.com. HR, you're a business growth strategist and, of course, the founder and president of Leaders Edge. So again, thank you so much for joining us. Josh, thanks for having me. Keep doing the fantastic work you're doing, my friend.

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23:16Do the