How Leaders Build Employee Buy-In

What makes employees truly buy into their work, their team, and their organization?

In this episode of Relationships at Work, host Russel Lolacher talks with business strategist, leadership coach, and author Dave Garrison about what drives employee buy-in and why so many teams slide into disengagement. Dave shares why leaders often unintentionally shut people down, how curiosity and vulnerability create stronger connection, and what it takes to build a culture where people feel ownership, trust, and real commitment to the work.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today we have Dave Garrison, and here is why he is awesome. He's a business strategist, leadership coach, and an author. He has helped thousands of leaders reengage their workforce with practical, sustainable solutions that foster trust, ownership, and high performance.

His insights have been featured in Forbes, Fast Company and INC. I don't never know if it's Inc or I.N.C. I've never figured that out. And he has a new book that you really should have a gander at The Buy-In Advantage. Why Employees Stop Carrying and How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Give Their All.

And today we're talking buy-in. Hello Dave.

Dave Garrison: Hey Russel, how are you?

Russel Lolacher: Delightful, sir. I've got my coffee. I'm, I'm revving up for the day. You're outta Arizona, is that right?

Dave Garrison: That's right.

Russel Lolacher: Okay. Okay. So a little bit nicer than where I am, Victoria. Still both lovely, but just different climates. So I appreciate you spending some time with me today. Buy-in. I've got so many questions, the good and the bad of employee buy-in. But before we get into any of that, I have the question I ask all of my guests, Dave, which is, sir, what is your best or worst employee experience?

Dave Garrison: My best employee experience is I had a boss early in my career who believed in me. And at the ripe age of 25 years old, he put me in charge of two broadcast stations a rock and roll station and a news station in the 25th largest market in America. And honestly, I don't know, I would've done that because I really didn't have any idea what I was doing.

I'd sold advertising and that was pretty important in the broadcast business to keep it afloat. But it was a great experience because he believed in me. He allowed me to make mistakes, and then he was there to catch me and say, okay, what the heck just happened? His name is Jack Clifford. He is also a guy if you're a foodie.

He's the guy who started the Food Network early on at the Weather Channel. I mean, so a lot. Just a guy who's very creative. I'm very grateful to him.

Russel Lolacher: So as a former radio guy myself, I've got a few questions on that that I wanna follow up with. So, if you were in sales, my experience with sales guys aren't broadcast people. They don't really have much experience when it comes to the community engagement's. Not the right way of saying it, but it is all about selling airtime, selling space, not necessarily the on air.

What sounds good, what doesn't sound good? Did you, did you have experience with that already or was that something you also had to learn?

Dave Garrison: No. I'll tell you about a, a huge mistake I made and you'll appreciate this as a broadcaster, but first of all, I started on air at 15 years old.

Russel Lolacher: You got the voice.

Dave Garrison: And I worked my way through, I worked my way through college on air, so I went nights and weekends at university so I could work 40 hours a week and get through school.

And when I got outta school and got my master's degree, I realized if I didn't start on commission sales right then, I would never learn what sales was about because I'd always be in corporate land telling other people what to do. So I became a salesperson. But it was with the background

of. Understanding what the on-air and audience experience was like. One of the worst mistakes I made. I was very proud. I sold j Walter Thompson, a big advertising agency, a very large package for our FM rocker station. Unfortunately, it was too many commercials and we started to sound instead of like playing the hits, we were playing J Walter Thompson.

So I was serving the bottom line really well, but I'd forgotten the audience and it was out of balance and it's a lesson I've never forgotten that you might appreciate us as being talent.

Russel Lolacher: Absolutely. And it was always funny as being the talent going. I don't make like Canadians, Canadian Broadcasting does not pay as well as American broadcasting. I'll say that right now. But even then as the talent, you're like, how do you make money doing this? Oh, sales, that's where the, that's who you make any money in this.

I remember I had a program director who was also an on-air talent, and he would do voice the commercials. And do like the morning show. I'm like, you know, there's no difference if you're voicing all the commercials and doing the morning show. The P the listener has no concept that there is a difference or a break or anything if they're just hearing your voice through the whole thing.

So it was, it was funny for him to sort of connect the dots that you can't be business and the talent at the same time. But sometimes like you need a bit of, you need a bit of I don't know, break creativity, a little bit of spark, but I love the fact that you came at it with the idea of understanding the entire picture to understand what a better product is, for lack of a better term, when presenting it to the public.

I love that, that, thank you for that.

Dave Garrison: And that that balance is so important at for us as leaders to balance different interests. And I'm gonna talk about the amazing buying-in advantage and why buy-in is a crisis in a minute. But first. So another broadcast story you'll really appreciate is our long-term sponsor for the New News on an AM station in a really small town in America.

Was McCreary Funeral Homes, I'll never forget because we were supposed to say the news is brought to you by McCreary Funeral Homes with two convenient locations to serve you like you could die anywhere. But here's the deal. The format was, we had to say the headline and then say The new news is brought to you by McCury Funeral Homes.

But we were not allowed to say death, anything about death in the headline. So if 12 people had just died at an explosion, I had to say. The daffodils are blooming. The news, news is brought to you by McCreary Funeral Home with two convenient locations to serve you. One on the Kirkwood Highway one, you know.

Russel Lolacher: It is amazing what you still remember, like so I'm like I in the back of my brain, I haven't been in radio in like 20 years, but I still can say the Copper Valley Mechanicals Country Capital countdown. Any chance I get it, it's

still stuck. So you teased perfectly, like you were doing radio for me just a few minutes ago about what our topic is.

So I'm gonna dive right into that now. Employee buy-in, the buy-in advantage buy-in, I find to be an interesting journey when it comes to leaders and employees. But before we get to any of that, how do you define what buy-in even is when it comes to the workplace? David?

Dave Garrison: Yeah, that's a great question. And the people who are in the study engagement would tell you there's one question that is the bright line and the answer to the question of, would you recommend this as a place to work? Defines whether or not people are bought in, would you want somebody else to be here?

And sadly, in Canada, in the us, in the uk, in France, Germany, Spain, South Africa, the numbers are generally down. The US is at a 10 year low and only a net of about a third of people would say work here, which means two. Two thirds of the people are either eh or stay away from this place. And that one talks about their attitude towards work now.

It doesn't mean they're not satisfied. So if you say, are people satisfied? Hey, we appreciate the paycheck, we appreciate that we get Friday's free pizza or whatever. They might be satisfied and they might be doing just what they're asked, but they are not engaged. And so I compare it to the enthusiasm that you might see at a football game to how people show up on Monday morning.

Those are the exact same people. What happened? Between the Friday night or the Saturday game, or the Sunday game and Monday morning. Those are the people I want showing up. What if they had the same enthusiasm at work for why it is we're doing this and what our objectives are? What if they brought that same passion to the workplace?

There's no reason they can't, it's that it is not asked of them. It is not invited, and leaders have not had the techniques to create that environment.

Russel Lolacher: Is, and thank you for that metaphor of, of, you know, rooting for a, a, a sports team or having that the love of something. I don't, isn't it a range though? 'cause I mean, there are some people that will be very buy-in, but others just, that's not their personality. They're introverts or they're, they're that way where they're, they like where they work, but they're not outwardly showing it, or that's just not how they show up as a person. Are we still talking about the same thing?

Dave Garrison: Yeah, that's a great question. I'm not talking about the rah rah as aspect. I'm talking about bringing your heart and your soul and your gut. To get getting something done. So you could be the biggest introvert in the world, but you bring a wealth of experience and because you're an introvert, you bring a different set of perspectives.

And what I wanna know is how would you think about the best way to get to this place we're trying to go? How do you contribute your experience here? It doesn't mean you're rah rah, it doesn't mean you're social butterfly or you know, queen Bee. It's you're you, but you bring your full experience and your full set and your full passion.

Even if it's a quiet passion, even if it's never expressed, you bring your full self to create great together with us.

Russel Lolacher: Most people don't start their journey in an organization not caring. They usually are excited regardless of the job. It's a new opportunity, new people to meet new, like it's not just a checkbox exercise, it is a, they're investing their time and everything. So to understand buy-in, I usually like to go the other way and understand what it is not so. How do you, how do employees stop caring? Like they started probably with the best of intentions. I'm sure the employer generally does too, but what's the, what's the shift?

Dave Garrison: You know, I, I'm, I'm smiling because I'm thinking because we beat it out of them and it's not intentional. I never woke up as a leader and I don't holds this story. This book is not a story of how great a leader I am. This story is what I learned from other great leaders, and I never woke up in the morning and said, today I'm going to beat it out of them.

I woke up with enthusiasm and said, Hey, what if we did this? What if we did that? And I meant the best by it, not realizing I was undercutting people. And so, you know, it reminds me of a t-shirt that I love. I'm the pilot and the USA CAA as the FAA as you know. And so I love this t-shirt that says the beatings will continue until morale improves.

And so what we do is we tell people what to do and then we ask, do you have any questions? Or we try to sell them on how great it is. As opposed to inviting them to engage and allowing them to participate. And so eventually as an employee, you learn that's the game. That's how it works, and that's what you can expect.

And so you're delighted and surprised when you come into a culture where people matter.

Russel Lolacher: So what are leaders missing in that shift? Because like you said, if that, if you're showing what they're doing to beat them, what are they noticing about the two metaphor? To look at the employee if they need to be situationally aware, what do they look for? What are some signs that maybe we need to recalibrate what our leadership even looks like to get buy-in?

Dave Garrison: Yeah, there are warning signs, and in fact, we have a free online assessment tool. You can in 90 seconds assess for yourself if you have a lead a buy-in issue. At www buy in book.com 90 seconds, you evaluate yourself. It's free. Check it out. Here are warning signs. People do the minimum asked and no more meetings are canceled or start late or run late.

You lose key talent. Objectives are am missed. It's things like that. And you know, you go, oh, well, we'll just set a new set of objectives, and you kind of know that other stuff's gonna come up. There is no clarity about priorities. People couldn't tell you what the compelling purpose of the business is, why it exists.

But again, leaders are not trying to make this a failing situation. They are not trying to continue the beatings until morale improves. Nobody is trying that. But there are four myths that leaders need to unbelief. Before things will change. Here are the four myths. One is we've been taught since, we're we lads that there is a teacher that has all the answers and there is only one right answer and that's beaten into us through school and we carry it on to leadership.

I'm the leader. I must have the answers. I have more experience than they do. And if you believe that, then you will not have a culture of buy-in second myth. Leaders are taught to focus on traditional profit and loss statements. No problem with that, or the balance sheet or metrics or whatever. Nope. No issue with that, except that they don't measure the cost of turnover.

They don't measure the cost of lack of engagement. It's not in your face and you don't see it every day. So you need to put in extra effort to recognize. It's people who are making all this stuff happen. What if everybody was pulling in the same direction and really cared and measure that? Leaders are told that the war for talent is all about money.

If people leave, it's 'cause they leave for a better job, which we call out as the greatest lie of all time in the book, people, oh, I'm leaving for a better job. It's the polite thing to say, what am I gonna say? I am leaving 'cause you're a jerk. No. Research shows that purpose and values are equally important, if not more important than money.

In some cases, people will leave you for less money if they feel like they can better align with a compelling purpose. And finally. People are leaders are encouraged to ignore people as part of the equation. It just does not come up. So here's a, here's a question for you. When you look at your business's quarterly objectives, how many of them have to do with improving engagement or improving the quality of the work experience based on the data you have from what people say and people's ideas?

And most businesses it's like, no, no, no, no, no. We're gonna focus on how do we improve sales and what can we do to improve productivity and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's people making that happen. So what would happen if you said, Hey, how do we improve the experience for our people? Because that drops to the bottom line, oddly enough, where engagement is higher, productivity is higher, profit is higher, safety is better, innovation is higher, and customers are happier.

You know, you don't, I don't have to tell you, you walk into a a government office. They're in Victoria, and there's a certain vibe about the office and how government employees feel about their jobs. And this is not all government offices, but most. And then you walk into a store that has employees who are delighted and they don't have to say a thing.

You can feel it before they say anything by how they behave. So how do you want your customers to feel? Your employees are customers. They are your internal customers. Do they get the same amount of attention and love? That your external customers do? There's a, there's a question.

Russel Lolacher: I think most organizations, and they don't mean to be, but are unbelievably hypocritical about what they think leadership is. Because to your point, everything you've described isn't leadership. It is management.

It is delivery. It is an Excel spreadsheet. It is not the humans that actually get, how I like to describe it is leadership is not the what.

It's the how. It's how got there. It's the people that got you there. It's the journey to, don't me wrong. The destination has to be important. It has to be a goal. But who's in the boat with you? Who's, you know, who's, are they all rowing in the same direction? Are they gonna start their own boats? Man, I'm going down this metaphor hard, but needless to say, I think, I think a big part of that is that we are mislabeling leadership. And to your point, all those myths come down. If we actually tried taught it. And actually treat it seriously. We would be showing up in onboarding, performance reviews all these things that talk about how did you grow your team, how, what opportunities did you provide? So that makes me start thinking, where do we start, Dave?

Because there's so many areas where we can jump in and get a little bit more serious about what buy-in looks like, but to the employee, to the culture. We do need a starting point. Where would you recommend that? Maybe for the leader, the team, maybe even the organization's culture itself? What do you suggest?

Dave Garrison: Yeah. First of all I think that each of us has to accept, and it's hard for me to accept sometimes that I have a blind spot, meaning I've got so many filters on what's going on. I believe I see the truth and what I have to accept and remind myself all the time is I do see the truth, but it's my truth, not your truth.

So the first thing we have to recognize is we as leaders, we as followers, we as everybody have blind spots, and all of us are smarter than any of us. When we work collectively, we can come up with better answers. And one of the things we talk about in the book, for example, is, is collective genius. And this is the process of getting everybody's best thinking towards a common problem, which most businesses lack the technique to do.

And lemme tell you the story of weighing the ox, just as an example of collective genius. So early 18 hundreds, rural village, UK AG community, there's an ox. Hanging there and the statistician so John Galton says, I wonder if people can guess the weight of the ox and the 800 people who come all guess the weight and they're all wrong.

But being a statistician, he takes the average and people are within a couple of pounds of this 1200 pound ox. So all of them are smarter than any of them. Fast forward, the US Navy loses a submarine in the 1960s and they have to find where it is in the North Atlantic. So they sent out the last data they had to a hundred experts around the world.

People are experts in weather and metals and oceanography and all this stuff, and processing the answers they identified where the submarine is within 200 yards. Fast forward to the last US presidential election. I was facilitating a quarterly conference call with my business school classmates, and I said, by the way, drop into the chat box.

Who's going to win the US election? And by how much? There was zero discussion. Couple of months later, we're having another call. I realized, Ooh, I never added it up. I added it up and then I had to go to Pew Research to find out what the results really were in the popular vote, and they were within 0.4%.

With no discussion. All of us are smarter than any of us, but the thing is, we lack the techniques to get all of our input. So after you realize you have a blind spot and all of us are smarter than any of us, then take a team assessment and have people answer how they see the situation and then get together, compare notes, and identify.

Where you can start to make improvements based on the collective assessment. And in addition to that 92nd assessment, we have a team assessment online free. You can take it, but then have your team discuss it and learn from the team Leaders. Go last, so you're the last one to speak. Leaders go last except when it comes to vulnerability and then leaders go first.

Russel Lolacher: You're singing. You're singing from my song sheet, Dave. Like, so self-awareness and situational awareness are key to any great leader. You have to understand you. You have to understand your triggers. You have to understand how you show up. But I also love that you and, and situational awareness, which is understanding your team, which is understanding the environment in which you work.

But I also love that you've sort of include being humble, being under, 'cause there is so much data out there that shows the gap between what leadership thinks and what employees know. And that gap seems to be getting larger and larger, especially if you go to the executive level because they only know what they know.

They don't know what's net generally happening in there. Organization. I remember talking to one executive, I've shared this story a few times on the podcast where I was doing a presentation and I had an executive in the back of the room crossing his arms just listening in, and at the end of the presentation he goes, how do I understand what my culture is?

Only these two people will talk to me. I'm like, you mean your two staff are the only people that talk to you? Get outta your bloody office, go talk to people like you are creating your own tower in the sky of disconnection. But that was his understanding of culture because. He was an other. He was a self-imposed other. So I love you talking about being humble, understanding that you don't have all the answers, that there is a way forward if you're vulnerable, vulnerable enough to dot, dot, do. So understanding self-awareness situation or humble abilities. But as a leader trying to understand buy-in. What if your employees are skeptical? What if they're hesitant? Because we'll have the best of intentions. We'll believe in the message, but your, your staff are like going, yeah, I, this is the first time I've ever heard the vision or mission. How come nobody ever talks about that? Like there is this disconnect. Because maybe we're trying something new for the first time, or say somebody's listening to this podcast and going, I'm gonna start buying tomorrow when they've had a horrible relationship to date with their employees. So they're more skeptical now. How do you shift, turn the boat.

Dave Garrison: First of all, I would ask what's your ability to control anybody else or their thinking. You can tell, you can badger, you cannot control what anybody else thinks, but you can be honest and say something like, do you know what? I'm trying something new. I am committed to this. I'm gonna stumble, I may not do it perfectly, but I'd ask you to give me some grace because I wanna work together with you to create a better workplace.

So if you'll come along, we're gonna try stuff. I'm gonna do my best to listen to your feedback as we go along. I'm gonna lay out a process and ask you to lean in with me, and it's gonna be, we're gonna have stumbles along the way, but I believe we can do it, and I'm willing to try different things. Would you be with me?

And just invite people in.

Russel Lolacher: So almost like a co-creation.

Dave Garrison: It is all co-create, you know, we in the book the Buy an Advantage, we call it Done with Not Done to Done two is okay. Let me tell you what our goals are. Any questions? Great. I'm delighted to know what your goals are. So what's for lunch? It doesn't mean anything. Co-creation means. Do you know, here are the goals that the executive team has come up with.

I'm curious to know. One, do you have any questions about them? Two, how do you see our department contributing to these? And three, what would be our first steps? Who would like to take on that plan?

Russel Lolacher: Where's the like, and it's funny, this kind of ties back to our original conversation about broadcasting. It's right. It's about talking with, not talking at which unfortunately a lot of. People do that and radio, Hey, you're in a room by yourself talking into a microphone. It feels like that sometimes when literally if anybody's listening to you, they're listening to you by themselves in a car.

So you are having a one-on-one conversation.

So this pulls me back into this of, okay, so we are co-creating this buy-in with our staff. Where do we navigate away from the being too salesy? Being a little too like, well, if you blah, blah, blah, and you're reading the script, executive has provided you, I'm kind of getting into the communication piece of this.

Dave Garrison: Yeah, it's, first of all, it's gotta be authentic communications, and it requires authentic listening. Authentic listening means you're not listening to respond. You're not listening to judge. You're listening to be curious. Another maximum in the book is. Curiosity and judgment cannot coexist. If you are thinking in evaluation land like that idea will never work, or I can come up with a better idea, you'll never hear what the other person says.

So remaining curious, you know that leader sitting in the back of the room with the arms crossed? Reminds me, man. We did a session in Detroit with a hundred leaders and probably a quarter of, they were from all over the country. A quarter of them were sitting with their arms crossed. And we said, your job, when somebody comes to you and says, what should I do about your job, is to ask them what they would do about it.

And no matter what they tell you, your job is to not evaluate, but to stay curious, which looks like how did you come up with that solution? What else did you consider? They'll teach you how they think about the world. Your job as a leader is to build the muscle of decision making in other people. And you can say if their, if their answer makes no sense at all to you ask yourself, what on my checklist are they not?

What are they missing? And then ask them a question. If you also considered how easy it is to train people on this, how would your answer change? And so you ask questions based on your experience instead of judging what other people think. And that just is pushback big time from the older white man who's sitting in the corner office because they've earned that right to be in the corner office and they have 20 years experience and you don't.

Which is awesome and you have earned the right. But how about if we flip the model and say Your experience is incredibly valuable to inform the questions you ask of those people behind you who will never face the same situations you did. However you experience and what you've learned to form your criteria list is invaluable, and that's how you teach the next generation.

Allow other people to experience and guide them as opposed to telling them, so there's no tell, there's no sell. There's engagement,

Russel Lolacher: You are leading me right into that next question of diversity because we are sitting here with what, four different generations? Almost five different. Generations in the workforce and getting buy-in from them is very different based on their own experience. But I mean, we also, when we talk about diversity, it's not just generational, it's also cultural.

It's rural versus urban. It is, it is so many different aspects besides skin color, besides age, are you approaching this differently? But I, I mean, I kind of, I'm already hearing the answer in that, listen, understand their journey first and approach it with curiosity.

Dave Garrison: Absolutely. It's human beings, not human doings, and each human being comes to you with a different set of experiences and when you can tap into everyone's experience. It doesn't require discussion. When you can tap into everyone's experience, you can come up with more choices. The more choices you have, the better choices you're able to make as a leader, the better the choices that the team has contributed to.

The more buy-in there is, the more buy-in there is, the better the results. It's pretty simple formula, but it's different than what we've tried in the past.

Russel Lolacher: I guess I haven't asked this and I should have actually kicked this off. Why? Why do we need buy-in? Because if people are showing up and they're doing their jobs, like you said before. They're not that extra level of enthusiasm. There's not that extra level of interest. Curiosity, why do we even need that if the work's still getting done there, Dave?

Dave Garrison: Yeah, you don't need it. The question is a couple things. One, do you wanna make your job easier as leaders? And what I mean by that is one of the questions we ask leaders is, Hey, show of hands, how many of you have time to get the really important stuff done? We were with a group of talented executives the other day, not one hand was raised.

So leaders don't have time to get the important stuff done. So if you wanna have time, if you wanna have better results. If you want to retain people, and if you wanna create a working environment where people want to be there, you'll attract other great people because Great attracts great. Or if you just, let's just do the work.

This is not worth the effort. That's fine. Let your competitors smoke you. That's fine.

Russel Lolacher: Subtle, real subtle, Dave. Very subtle. Well, we will live in a world now where change is constant. It's not a one off. It's not a, it starts now, it ends here. So my brain's going towards resiliency. My brain's going towards, if we're gonna make buy-in part of our culture, how do we do that from a consistency standpoint?

Because I'm hearing what you're, you're throwing out there of these conversations and so forth, but I'm trying to look for a more foundational, how do we make this back to the resiliency word.

Dave Garrison: Yeah, so a couple of different things about that. One is let's talk about uncertainty and change, and then let's talk about how you can sustain it. So in this time of huge uncertainty and rapid change, it is very unsettling. We see it in mental health issues. We see it in turnover. We see it in absenteeism.

We see it in stress at work. I think as a leader we have an obligation to confront the uncertainty and just say, look, I don't know. So in the case of Canada and the US I don't, I know there's a lot of tension. I don't know how this is gonna play out. This is a big risk to each of the two countries and we've gotta figure something else.

But we can't do that ourselves, and I can't tell you how what's gonna happen there. What I can tell you is our compelling purpose is fill in the blank. I can tell you we've agreed to live by the values of fill in the blank. And the three most important things for us to get done in this year are one, two, and three.

And so I can tell you that I'm committed to working together with you, and I am certain that we can do great things by working together. So let's work on what we can control. I would have that message, right?

Russel Lolacher: How does that show up in things like hiring or performance reviews? Because these things are the things that never go away, but we seem to be sticking to the standards of the 1950s. These don't seem to be innovative things, so if we're trying to get buy-in, if that's the goal, people to buy into the culture, people to buy into the vision, the mission, how does it show up in things that are these tent poles in organizations?

Dave Garrison: It starts with the interview process. So I would ask you in the interview process, are you trying to hire for a skillset? Has five years experiences five years experience doing financial forecasts can manipulate an Excel spreadsheet, you know, in their sleep. Is that what you're hiring for or do you take those as sort of givens and are you hiring for cultural fit Companies that hire for cultural fit take the opportunity to ask questions like, Hey, this is our compelling purpose.

Are, we're we are building a company to create happiness. How do you see yourself in that? What does that mean to you? So are you using compelling purpose in the interview process to see how they respond? Because if there's not a purpose fit, people are more likely to turn over six months out because they find someplace else where there's a better fit.

Are you asking about values? So let's say integrity is a huge value. So you can say, oh, do you believe in integrity? And the answer is yes, of course. I believe in integrity. Or you can ask, can you tell me about a time at work when your integrity was challenged? What did you do? How did you respond? So learn about purpose, fit, and learn about values, challenges as a critical part of the interview.

Then after you hire the right people, when you get to the point of recognition of people, call out the good things people have done and tie it to a value or your purpose. And then when you give promotions, tie it to your value or your purpose as opposed to they were the top salesperson or whatever. So I think that's a really easy way to start at the beginning and then continue through.

But what great leaders do is they model the behavior they want. So it's done with not done to. They cascade authority and they provide recognition and reinforcement regularly.

Russel Lolacher: I'm gonna challenge you a bit on that one though, because I don't know if it starts with hiring. I think it starts with why would they apply to work for you to begin with, right? There is that initial, how the organization shows up in the world as a foundational start, because you need applicants to be able to hire them and interview them.

So. What do you show to get people to buy in before they've even, you know, it's that extra marketing piece, that extra community engagement piece that I'm kind of curious about. 'cause buy-in, it can't be reactive necessarily. There needs to be some proactive work even before people show up. Any thoughts on that?

Dave Garrison: Yeah. So let's talk about say Bob Evans. Is Bob Evans. Do I have that right? Yeah. No, what is, what's my coffee shop? What's my local coffee shop? I've got it close. Not there. What? What is a local coffee

Russel Lolacher: Oh my local coffee shop is Spiral, Spiral Cafe.

Dave Garrison: Okay. So are you going to believe the advertising claims that they make, or are you gonna believe what you read, Google or Yelp reviews? Right? And so I'm gonna trust much more what Glassdoor says than I am. Come to work for us. We're a fun place to work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So the dealio is, you've got to start with the internal reality of what your company is before you're gonna attract the kind of people you want, and they are going to do the selling for you.

It's what people say about your company, it's how engaged people are that allow you to attract great candidates. We know companies that have high buy-in rates. Attract disproportionate number of candidates and they get to choose from the best. So why wouldn't you wanna choose from the best employees? It starts with how you treat your current employees and how they describe what it is as a place to work.

Russel Lolacher: Such a great litmus test to go over to Indeed or Glassdoor and go, what are your own employees saying about you? Because they're, and especially as we get to younger generations, not shy, not shy, about top. About talking about their organization, their boss, and it doesn't even have to be as formalized as Glassdoor.

Indeed, they're on Facebook, they're on any social platform. They feel they're making tiktoks to tell you how much they hate their boss or how they're being mistreated or raving about them. But as we both know Dave, everybody goes for the negative first.

That's what fuels, but if you're not paying attention to those things, these are canaries in a coal mine that you need to be paying a hell of a lot more attention to. Yeah. Whose responsibility is that though? Is that hr, is that executive? Like who's, who's understanding the brand before they can make these steps?

Dave Garrison: Yeah, to you know, it's kind of like the quality thing. We the quality. You know, explosion. We went through a couple of decades ago. It's it is an attitude. It's a belief. It's a commitment. It's not a department's job. It's all department's jobs. It's not hrs job. Culture is, culture is owned by everyone in the company, not just the leaders, every single person in the company.

And how we show up, what we are committed to and how we treat each other, and then how we behave. And when people don't behave, we gotta call it out. So if you have a person who is a star performer, who is violating your values. You're sending a message that, oh, it's all about performance. It's not about the values.

We don't care about integrity. We just care that person was a great salesperson. If we're doing that, that speaks louder than any poster on the wall.

Russel Lolacher: And the psychological safety you need to have within your organization for that frontline staff to feel comfortable, Hey, I saw this on Facebook. I want to take it to whomever that has to be received. Well, and curious, to your point from earlier is they need to be welcomed. That it is okay. We're always ratting out anybody.

They're literally trying to help by providing this information.

Dave Garrison: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, there's a lot of talk about psychological safety, which leads to trust in the organization. We know that high trusting organizations are high performing organizations and have high engagement, but there are two prerequisites we've found before trust can exist. First, a person needs to know in their heart, they are seen as human beings, not human doings, meaning the people around me and my bosses see me as a human being with a full set of other interests, and they see who I am and they're curious about who I am, and they care.

So if you're in a caring environment, it's a first prerequisite. The second is that people around me, and particularly the people above me, are vulnerable. They're willing to say, I don't know. They're willing to share what real life looks like about their mistakes. They're willing to be real people. And when leaders set that vulnerability, then you're inviting other people to be vulnerable.

And that's why we say. Leaders go last in offering opinions or ideas. Leaders go last except when it comes to vulnerability and then leaders go first.

Russel Lolacher: There's something we don't often talk about which is the bad side of trust. We assume trust is good. I'm like, no. They can. Employees can trust that their bosses won't have their back. They can trust that their boss will not support them. That's as consistent as the psychological safety, and that's still trust. Because that's what they're coming to expect. But we as leaders have to understand our relationship and what we're putting out in the world to understand if we're actually providing that psychological safety at all.

Dave Garrison: Yes. And if you, you could for example, ask an employee hey, you know, I know that trust is really important 'cause I read that or heard it on Russel's podcast. So I'm curious to know is this is this an environment where people can feel a great deal of trust and people go, oh yeah. And then you walk away and go, Hmm.

If you say, well, that's interesting. Are there any examples that you could cite that people might point to, to support that? And if they say, I don't know, I'll think about it, then you know that you just gotta Yeah, boss.

Yeah, boss answer.

Russel Lolacher: I wanna ask, what if we get it wrong? Because we're not perfect. I dunno if you know this or not, Dave, but we leaders, we're not perfect. And if we may get buy-in from our employees, but men, we might f up then things might, the thing we bought into might not work out because that happens a lot. Leaders are, don't have the full picture.

How do we navigate that? Because we've got the buy-in and now we've kind of failed that buy-in.

Dave Garrison: Own it. Own it publicly and say what you're gonna do about it and ask for people to help you in correcting it.

Russel Lolacher: Vulnerability. Yep. Vulnerability, transparency. Yep. Absolutely.

Dave Garrison: Yeah. We've all been there, believe me.

Russel Lolacher: So if I'm listening to this podcast going, damn it Dave, I wanna get this buy-in thing you're talking about. This is, this sounds right. Besides, you know, picking up the book, after listening to this podcast, what would you suggest is their first step tomorrow? As in where do they

Dave Garrison: don't wait.

Russel Lolacher: now, right now, do it. Damn it.

Dave Garrison: Today get take 90 seconds. If you've had time to listen to this and process it and say, man, I'm gonna try it, go to buyin book.com, take the 92nd self-assessment and rank yourself. It doesn't cost anything. Just see what answers you come up with. And then if you wanna move forward, get your team to take the team assessment and then compare answers and say, look, I am committed.

To trying things differently. I'd like to know what you're experiencing and together I'd like to begin on this journey, and if that feels right to you, grab the book or listen to the book or whatever and share it with a team. And begin the journey by collectively deciding what it is we're gonna do First.

Simple stuff is easy. Like more effective meetings or getting more curious with employees or coming up with a way to treat people like human beings or to increase vulnerability. Whatever it is you decide where to start. Every chapter in the book can stand alone, and you just pick where you wanna start and give yourself grace to stumble.

Reinforce what's working well and celebrate together and be real with people. Look, we haven't always been great at this. We're gonna try something new. Will you please work with us and let's do this together because it's gonna be so much better for everybody and try it.

Russel Lolacher: That is Dave Garrison, business strategist, leadership coach, and author of a brand new book called The Buying Advantage, Why Employees Stop Caring, and How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Give Their All. Thank you so much for being here, Dave. Appreciate it,

Dave Garrison: Russel, thank you. Great questions and have a great journey. Just start with the first step.

Russel Lolacher: Man. We sound like two old radio people, I tell ya. The voices. The voices. Thanks Dave.