3 things to do to Become a Boss that people Love! - James Turk

0:00What can leaders do in organizations to help managers be set up for success? I think that often they have not been trained either. So they're not quite sure what they should be doing or what they should be greenlighting. They'll often come in and just do a band-aid. They'll check a box. Oh, we signed up for LinkedIn Learning. We are good.

0:24What would happen if we just told the truth? Welcome to TruthWorks, where we dig into the nitty-gritty of leadership and work. And what needs to change. I'm Jessica Neal. And I'm Patti McCord. Our journey together started in HR, but trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious. So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us. Let's dive into another episode.

1:01Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Truthworks. I am Jessica Neal, and I'm solo today. Patty is still recovering from her surgery, but I have a special guest here today named James Turk. And James is, I'm going to let him tell his whole story, but he's the author of this incredible book, which is called The Giving Game, Becoming the Leader Others Want to Follow, which I love that title because I think what I have learned being a leader myself is that if they don't want to follow you, it's kind of game over. So welcome to the show, James. I'm so excited to have you. Can you tell us a little bit about your story?

1:47Because I think your story is really interesting, how you kind of got to where you are now. but fill us in other than the story you were telling me earlier about how you got lost when you were a child with your cousin at Six Flags. Oh, yes. Yes. Which I'm sure had a lot to do with where you got to today. So tell us everything. A very formative experience. So thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And I hope that Patty has a very speedy recovery. That's no fun. So glad to be here. So why am I here? So I wrote the book, The Giving game, becoming the leader that others want to follow. And this book is really just the output of a life well lived.

2:25And I was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, and was the youngest of seven kids. We were talking before the show, you know, we would go between Mississippi and Texas, and we had lots of fun. But like with so many kids, there was a lot of like chaos and just craziness. And in those early years, you know, my parents were coaches. My dad was a football coach, My mom was the swim coach. And so we kind of grew up in that system. And I really got to see my parents just being kind of just influencers within our community and helping kids. And they were the parents that other kids just sort of gravitated towards.

3:00And as I got older, we also had a one of my siblings is developmentally disabled. And her care became a big part of our family. So I didn't like it as a kid because I was like, why do we have to do this? But my parents like, this is important. We're going to do this. And so kind of caring for my sister became part of it as well. So kind of their coaching, taking care of my sister, very much kind of formed the way that I saw the world. We all went through kind of parochial schools, so Catholic school system, which at its core, however you see it, it's really about service. And it's really about how you can kind of help those in need.

3:36So all those things really just formulated kind of how I saw the world and kind of how I was going to really go out into the world and decide what I wanted to do. My career path was very nonlinear. I kind of bounced around different colleges, and I initially moved to Chicago from Mississippi to work in the galleries. And I kind of worked with a couple of friends, and we built this gallery from the ground up. And one of them was an artist. One of them was a business person. and I had charisma and energy and youth and the three of us built this business and it was terrific and it actually worked and we kind of started this very successful gallery that was actually in business for about 30 years.

4:16I left after a few years, but the three of us were really able to create something and in that experience, it was really bootcamp for just business 101, how do you kind of produce an event, how do you market it, how do you engage customers? we would work with interns from the local colleges and we had some freelancers. So it was my first exposure to actually kind of working with people and kind of leading them loosely stated. Ultimately, I moved myself to New York in my early 20s, really to continue working in the art business. And then I got to New York and New York is a tough market. Chicago is wonderful.

4:51Love Chicago. And it's just an easy big city. And I came with all my Mississippi-isms and all that to New York. And New York was a much tougher market. So I stayed in the art world for about a year. And then it was just proving to be too tough. I ended up having to do some cater waitering and all sorts of other stuff. So ultimately, that led me down a different path of getting into human resources. And I worked on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs, initially on the equities trading floor, and then ultimately in benefits administration. Left there, ended up in trade publishing. So I was trying to figure out where my place was, like, what do I want to do?

5:32Love the people I worked with at Goldman. They were so smart and I learned so much. And it was so gratifying just to be around such great people. But I wasn't crazy about the industry. It just wasn't for me, like just investment banking just wasn't my calling. But I loved working in HR and this idea of kind of helping people, helping the employees. So I took a job in trade publishing for Bantam Double Day Dell, which is now Random House, and went there and it was a promotion. And then I led a couple of people there and had an opportunity to kind of spread my wings and learn a little bit more about what it meant to lead people.

6:09While I was there, I decided that my true passion was the theater and stage and acting. I was in my late 20s. I was in New York City. He's like, did I really come here to be a benefits manager? I could, but certainly there's something else I can do. So I went back to school and I studied with this guy, Freddie Karaman, who was a Meisner technician. He was one of Meisner's, he was one of the big method acting teachers. He was one of his protégés. And working with Freddie, I just did the work. And ultimately, I got some small gigs on soaps and some indie films and stuff. I was casting - You were on a soap opera?

6:47I was. I was on two soap operas. Which one? I was on All My Children, and I was on Guiding Light. Oh. Tiny, tiny little roles. Yeah. So what they call in the union, under five. So I wouldn't have more than five lines per episode. Yeah. But I loved it. Because I was learning the craft, and it was just fun. Yeah. Did that for a while, and was really trying to, I really thought that was going to be it, and I was waiting to get my big break. Meanwhile, someone I had grown up with in Mississippi, my best friend, her husband's mother, not to get too deep here, was the senior vice president of a very prestigious training and development company out of Boston that had a strategic partnership with Harvard.

7:26And they did sales training, leadership training, all sorts of things. And they had sold this big piece of business to Home Depot. And they essentially needed warm bodies to go out into the field and run these little two-hour workshops. And she tapped me and I had known her and she had done a little bit of mentoring for me in my 20s. And she said, I think you'd be great at this. There's like a performative component to it. Look at the facilitation guide as if it's a script. Study up, know your transitions, kind of know what's your emotional truth and all that stuff. So I very much approached facilitating as if it were a performance, which served me well.

8:00And I was able to kind of essentially fake it till I make it because I didn't really understand a lot of the technical parts of leadership at that point. So did both for a little while and realized it's like, you know, I've got a knack for this training and then doubled down on that and ended up working for that company for many years and got all my certifications and worked for like Disney, Nike, ExxonMobil, and really, really kind of mastered the craft. So that's kind of, yeah, so that's a lot. That is a lot. But you know what? I also tried to become an artist in New York. I went to art school at School of Visual Arts, which I'm sure you walk by.

8:37Right down the street from me. Yeah. And my dad had begged me not to go to college there because he's like, you'll never get a job. You'll never make any money. And it was kind of right. But I worked in art galleries until I got into recruiting in HR, which is where my career started. But I think what I love about business is that it is creative. I don't know if you find that as a creative person, but you have to be incredibly creative to do these things. I completely agree. I usually frame it up as art and science. So the science is the research, the proof, the model, and then the art is our interpretation of it.

9:20How do we bring these ideas to life in authentic ways that are... I'm a big fan of Dan Goldman, emotional intelligence, and in particular, that idea of service orientation. So the creativity comes like, okay, how can I really understand what we're trying to do here, whether it's to develop a staff member or if it's go to market? What's the service orientation? How can I position and frame these things up in a way that's going to help the audience be most receptive? whether it's a customer buying my product or if it's a direct report that I'm trying to motivate to take on an assignment or be open to feedback.

9:55So I completely agree with you. Okay. Let's talk about your company now and what you do. And then let's then get into the book because I have a lot of questions about that book. Very good. Yeah. So with the book, so I started the Turk group technically in the 2000s, but it wasn't really until 2015 that I kind of moved away from that consulting company I mentioned earlier. And I had partnerships with a couple of others as well that I started the Turk group and really kind of began and the organization that I currently run. And it was classic. So Gladwell talks about in the tipping point, just like that one extra thing that's going to really get everything going.

10:36I had been working with AOL through a different consulting company and it was great. The buyer there went to a very small digital publisher called BuzzFeed, which was like 70 people. And he had reached out to me and the account director from the other consulting company and said, oh, we'd love to do something. But they were so small that they didn't fit within the business model of the big consulting company. So we tried to help him. Nothing happened. Like a year later, I had been doing my own kind of planning and kind of figuring out what the Turk group was going to look like. And I thought like, I wonder what, and his name is Regis.

11:08I was like, I wonder what Regis did. I wonder, and I was like, that. I was like, I should reach out to him. And I was like, I don't need anyone to hear from me. And I came so close to not reaching out to him. I was like, well, what the heck? And I'd send him a note. Hey, Regis, just curious, where did you land? And he said, great timing. We're ready to move forward. We have budget. And I was like, well, by this time, there were probably like 100 people. And I said, well, if you want, we can go back to the consulting company and see if they would kind of consider you again. Or I'm outside of my kind of NDA.

11:34We could probably work directly. I'm very comfortable working with you directly. So that was your first client. And that was it. And so at one point, BuzzFeed was as big as 3 ,000. So as they, and so just got in there and put my head down and partnered with Regis. And we built custom programming for the unique needs of those managers, which were very unique. It was creative. It was, you know, things weren't defined. It was, you were trying to motivate a bunch of creative people. So that really began the process and just really haven't looked back since. I initially thought I would be like a single shingle consultant, just me with a couple of clients.

12:07But then just path of least resistance, just the tenets of the business or be easy to work with, try to kind of add value, make it fun. Just do what you said you're going to do and just make sure that you do that consistently. And we've done that. And then it's really we haven't looked back since. So now it's a really nice practice of about 15 freelancers report into me, researchers, coaches, facilitators, and we just have a nice book of business. Everyone from Condé Nast to Squarespace to Goldman, Equinox, just a wide range of organizations. That's amazing. Mostly in leadership development, but we also do off-sites, a lot of coaching, things of that nature.

12:50That's great. I mean, you went from like starting an art gallery to, you know, running a company that coaches people on how to be great leaders. And so then you write a book because of course. Why not? Why not? Well, just to be a little vulnerable with everyone here. So when I was living in Chicago at the gallery, we would do all sorts of kind of, you know, fun events just to kind of get people in the door. One of the things we did is we met a psychic. So we did this like meet a psychic. before we actually did the event, we had her come over and just talk to us. And in that meeting, it was crazy how much she kind of knew or presumably knew.

13:27But one of the things she said to me is like, you are going to travel extensively. You're going to do all sorts of interesting things. It's really important that you journal and you take notes of everything because one day you're going to write a book and that book is going to be what you're known for. That was a long time ago. But it stuck with me. So I've always journaled. And then once I got into the learning and development space and then starting my own company, there was just a point where there are a lot of individuals and there's a lot of small companies that can't afford to bring us in to do an offsite or a workshop.

14:00And I kind of played around with how to meet the needs of that particular group. And we were doing some open enrollment workshops, which were good, but they were limited to the New York market. So it was just percolating. How can I have this idea of kind of like, you know, service orientation, service leadership, like there's an untapped need out there. Like, how can I bring some of these ideas to them? And I was like, well, I could do that book. And the book could be kind of helping people who either have been like managing for a long time. And, you know, we were talking before, like they got promoted, but never got training, which is more prevalent than people would probably want to admit.

14:34So there's a lot of managers out there who are just, you know, doing the best they can. Yeah. God bless them. God bless them. Or are people who are thinking about going into it. So there's a lot of very talented individual contributors who are maybe being encouraged to get into the leadership track, but they're not quite sure if they want to do it. So the book can kind of help them make an informed decision and are for people who've just been promoted. So like, okay, that's the target here. Let me give these folks something that is kind of just a roadmap. Like, what are the things that you can do to increase the likelihood of you being successful?

15:14So, yeah, I'll sell it into workshops now, but it's really the market is, you know, small organizations or people who are kind of sitting in a smaller market. Hey, I really need to up my game. What can I do? This giving game looks interesting. Well, you know, and we were talking about this earlier, but I think as a CHRO, which I'm sure you work with a bunch of them. You know, there's just this struggle of leadership, right? And getting your leaders to be great. And how organizations promote managers and leaders is because they're good at their craft. They're good at marketing or they're good at engineering or they're good at finance.

15:53They don't promote them because they're good leaders because they're not leaders yet, right? So they haven't built teams. They haven't fired people. They haven't given feedback before. and then they put them in these roles because they're good at their craft and then they give them nothing to be successful. They don't teach them how to hire. They don't teach them how to fire. They just throw them in there and then they're like, why aren't they doing better? Why aren't they having one-on-ones with their people? Why aren't they giving their people good feedback? Why aren't they developing people's careers?

16:27Because they don't know how. And also you didn't tell them they needed to do any of those things. So then I think a lot of organizations then go off and spend a lot of money on training. So maybe they send them to like management 101 training or whatever. But that also does nothing, right? It really, you know, maybe they get like managers get like one good nugget out of these things. But they don't walk away becoming great managers from these sessions. So you tell us, what should organizations be doing? What should leaders be doing if they've been recently promoted or even if they've been in the role for a long time?

17:08So it's such a great question. And I always think it's the habit of leadership, right? So building and developing the habit of leadership. And some people will go to those training programs, and there are a couple of them that are just highly motivated and really want to figure it out. And they'll take a few things, and they'll run with it. But the vast majority of people will just be overwhelmed and they don't really know where to start. So for people going into leadership for the first time, there is a solution. You are not alone. So first of all, just kind of realizing that there are millions and millions of other managers who have been in the exact same position.

17:43There's lots of books about it. There's a book called Leadership Pipeline. You probably know it from your CHRO role, which is super helpful. And it just kind of lays out what you need to do at different junctures. So from individual contributor to first line leader, what does that look like? What do I really need to do differently? And it's very helpful for people to be able to just see it in black and white. Like, okay, here are the differences and here's what I actually need to learn how to do. And for us, it's about taking like the mystery out of it and really just laying out like there's a science and there's a plan.

18:13You just need to kind of like build your plan and work your plan, which part of it's training, but a lot of it's just experiences. It's finding a mentor. It's kind of watching TED Talks and books. So the advice would be just understand and give yourself a moment to celebrate the promotion if you're recently promoted. And then just create your plan in the book, not to plug the book. But in the book, we talk about this idea of the first 45 days being critical. And you want to start strong. And we just lay it out into really three phases, the first two, middle two, and final two weeks. And it's all about just getting your head in the game, kind of who's who, how do they measure results, who's the team, how are people experiencing the team.

18:58Then start thinking about looking for some quick wins and making sure that you're aligning yourself to your boss, doing a thorough audit of kind of what the skills are required for managing at that organization. Do your due diligence. Look at other sources also. Google's Project Oxygen, Leadership Pipeline. pipeline and just get a clear around kind of what those things are and then really be deliberate around, okay, what's my plan to actually learn these things? And then the final two weeks, really kind of pulling all that together and start thinking about like, okay, what's my vision for not only myself for this first year, but really my area and my team socialize that with other to create some sense of purpose and some sense of community around kind of who we are, what we're doing, and most importantly, where we're going.

19:44Yeah, no, I think that is very practical and It makes a lot of sense, but probably not obvious to everyone to make a plan. So that totally resonates. But what do you think is the main struggle you think most managers have? I have an intuition on what I think it is, but I want to know what you think the biggest shortcoming or misunderstanding that they have. Sure, sure. And I'm going to answer that in just a second, but I don't think I answered the second part of your last question. So what can leaders in organizations to help managers be set up for success? I think that often they have not been trained either.

20:28So they're not quite sure what they should be doing or what they should be green lighting. As you said, they'll often come in and just do a band-aid. They'll check a box. Oh, we signed up for LinkedIn Learning. We are good, right? Or we have these people come in for a three-hour workshop. Great. So that's a good effort, but like, you know, leaders and organizations just looking at engagement surveys, looking at like retention, really understand their culture. You know, in today's competitive job market, you know, yes, it's about the money, but it's about all the other things too. People's personal development, professional development is a big piece of it.

21:04So really understanding that and that these managers are not only worth investing in, but they're going to be investing in your people also. So just really understanding kind of what the impact is that they don't do it. And then the second part of that is just really modeling it, right? So usually when we're selling stuff in, we'll sell the training, but we'll make sure that there's a playbook for the executive team or for senior leaders. And often there would at least be some type of like executive overview and we'll kind of tell them, this is how you visibly lead around these things. It's important that people see this in order for their habit to kind of materialize.

21:40Yeah. Yes. A hundred percent. Every CEO leader that I talk to, I'm like, do you do it? They're like, no. I'm like, then nobody else is. Yeah. I do offsites all the time and we kind of go through everything and I was like, okay, we've been here for two days. You're walking out of here. How are you discussed what we just did? Well, what do you mean? It's like, you've been in here talking about them and the business for two days, don't you think they're a little curious? Right. So if we're talking about transparency and kind of reinforcing the vision, and if you're going to be asking them to kind of muster up the energy to get through this next quarter, you got to think about how you're going to message that and how you're going to model that, right?

22:24But back to that last question, like what gets in the way? I think for me, I think the number one thing is some version of fear. I think that there's a fear of imposter syndrome. There's a fear if I stick my neck out that I'm going to be vulnerable, that if I kind of hold my people accountable to it, someone's going to say, but you don't do this, right? There's safety in kind of like letting the status quo continue. So I think that's, or I'm going to handle the conversation poorly and make the matters worse, so I just won't do it. Yes. Yes. Which is fear, I guess, you know? No, I think that that was sort of my inclination, but I would have maybe described it as an avoidance of things, which is a fear.

23:11But they don't like conflict. They don't want people not to like them. And they don't want to be the bad guy. And as a manager, you have to be all of those things. It's hysterical. He's like, I immediately went to Mean Girls. I want to be a cool mom. Yeah. But it's so true. I see all the time these leaders, I want to be a different kind of leader. We're going to be a different kind of company. We don't need ground rules or values. We don't need those things. Right. Yeah, you do. And they're all like, we're going to do it differently. It's like, okay, sure you are. Sure. Yeah, sure. But you need to define some things that people can orient themselves within those systems and within your leadership if we want them to perform.

23:54Yeah. Well, tell us, because I think people really learn through examples. And so give us a couple examples of success stories of managers that were sort of not doing these things and then how you took them to doing things and then what the impact was. Well, so just at a group level, so we work with lots of large organizations that kind of bring all of their leaders through our training programs. And then we have reinforcement. So you have one tech company here in New York that is kind of early AI pioneers, work with investment banks and financial services. And they were an organization of about 250 of that, probably 45, 50 were managers initially.

24:36So we came in and we kind of designed a program. They were very busy. So we couldn't pull them out of the business for like two days. So we designed, you know, these modularized, it was four modules of about two and a half hours. And then we would bring them through kind of this series over the course of a couple of months and give them some breathing room between each of the sessions. Between the breathing room, there would be action learning assignments. Like, okay, this is all good, but kind of what you're saying earlier, you know, we don't want this to be checking a box. So, you know, practical applications, like where are you going to actually like practice this and do this and then come back?