Leadership is often framed as a privilege—but what if it’s also a pressure cooker? And what if, the higher you go, the less truth you actually hear?
In this episode of Feedback Fix, Collette Revere sits down with Dr. Wayne Wilson—executive coach, systems thinker, and expert in emotionally intelligent leadership—for an unfiltered conversation about the invisible cost of power. Wayne shares why trust tends to erode at the top, how fear thrives in silence, and what leaders can do to create connection instead of compliance.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
Whether you’re building a team, leading through change, or simply want to be someone others can trust—this episode goes beneath the surface.
Watch the episode on YouTube or listen on Spotify or Apple.
Collette: Welcome to feedback fix where we get real about the messy conversations that move us forward. We are a live podcast, which means no scripts, no do overs, just unfiltered, honest conversations happening as they unfold. I'm Collette Revere, and today I'm sitting down with Dr Wayne Wilson, senior executive in workforce and leadership development, who helps mission driven healthcare and service organizations create high engagement, retention and performance through enterprise wide workforce development and coaching emotionally intelligent and inspiring leadership.
Wayne: Boy, that's a lot.
Collette: Wayne, that's a mouthful. So you are doing so much right now. Share with us what you're up to.
Wayne: So I am in a new kind of a new venture. So I started pivot services, uh, 10 years ago when I literally myself pivoted from healthcare. I had worked in healthcare almost 25 years, mostly in mental health, but I'd worked in hospitals and various settings of one kind or another, but I had been working as a mental health counselor and Executive Director for 18 years for one healthcare system. When that came to an end, I started really thinking about what I wanted to do and the meaning I wanted to make in the world. And so I started coaching. I moved from doing psych therapy, marriage and family therapy, teaching Marriage and Family Therapy university, to coaching and taking that insight, that experience with human change and growth into organizations which I had always loved. My first love was churches. My doctoral work was in seminary, but I took that to a corporation. Was brought in by one of my coaches, the owner of Snyder fleet solutions. And I spent 10 years building their learning and development program from the ground up and coaching all of their leadership team from front level leaders all the way to the president of the company, now the person who's now the president of company. So I had 10 years of rich experience, and they reorganized, and so they eliminated my role, and I'm back services. I've been and it's, it's the same work. I've been internal for 10 years now I'm external. So, yeah, work different. I had one client for 10 years. How about that?
Collette: Yeah, that's pretty amazing. You got to do some deep work there.
Wayne: I did get to do some very deep work. And I got to do my favorite work, which is, I'll call it systems culture, right? So my my doctoral work is in applying family systems theory to organizations. That's what my doctoral project was in. And so ever since, I've been curious about how individual dynamics play out in systems, groups and systems, right? That's, that's where I geek out, right? You want to give me the geek out conversation. Let's talk systems and organizations.
Collette: Ah, let's do it honestly. So go deep. I know. Okay, so this is also kind of my love language, because I was a therapist working with survivors of abuse and trauma before going into organizations, and I got a special certification in transactional analysis, which is,
Wayne: Oh my gosh, really.
Collette: So listeners, for those of you who don't know transactional analysis, is, I'll just do my little armchair version of it, but it's each of us has an internalized parent, adult and child, and so our parents can be the critical parent or a nurturing parent, but that voice inside your head, usually, it's critical, that says you know you shouldn't be doing that, or whatever, the adult is, the person who's living in reality, who's making logical choices, open to what's happening in the moment, accepting things as they come, and, you know, grounded in reality. And the child is the magical thinker who wishes that they would just win the lottery and would never have to work again, or, you know, have. These kind of I big ideas about what they wish would happen, often, is living in the past or some fairy tale land, but not actually in the present and the thing is, all of us have all of those pieces. They're all working together within us at any given moment, and they're all working with other people's parents, adults and children. Wayne, what is your experience with that? Because you had a reaction to it,
Wayne: Transitional analysis was, was where, what now is known as internal family systems, right? Richard forgot his last name. That's where that has come to and it's still a matter of those voices inside of us that have a conversation, right? That, for your listeners, know the good, the good guy on one shoulder and the bad guy on the other shoulder, and they're having a conversation back and forth, and you're in the middle, that's the cartoon version of all of this, right? The conversations that we have in our head? Yeah.
Collette: Yeah. So tell me how you came to this realization or this moment where you really saw the connections in the workplace with family systems work.
Wayne: Because I spent 20 years with couples in the worst moments of their lives, right? And it took me forever to figure out how to truly help them. I don't know if you know this, but the success rate for marriage counseling, I hate to say this to your listeners, is not great. It what is it? It's very low. Okay, I don't even know the quotes tenure. I'm 10 years out, so I don't, I don't even know it anymore, but I really got frustrated with the results, and so I hooked up with a lady named Sue Johnson, who designed and implemented a way of approaching couples that focused on the emotional engagement, not the words, not the argument, not the content, but the emotional dynamic, which is why it's called Emotionally Focused couples therapy. And she taught me that it's the about the dynamics between people that affects how they connect, right? It's all about connection. Well, you want to talk about impacting an organization. You just start picking apart how well or how poorly a manager connects with their employees. And you know this, say it out loud so all your listeners can hear it. People don't leave companies. They leave bosses?
Collette: Bosses, yes, right, so true.
Wayne: And at Snyder fleet solution, we built an amazing corporate culture through orientation over a three year period of time, we had like a seven, like a 15% turnover rate within the corporate division. No one wanted to leave corporate offices. But out in in uh, Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia and Laredo, Texas, it wasn't like that, right? And so people would come to our orientation. They would go, God, this is amazing. This is a great solution to work here. It's not like this where I work. Oh, no, right. Oh, that's not good. Matter the corporate culture that we created. What matter was there their connection or lack thereof with their employee? And I spent the last 15 years of my life implementing internally in an organization, almost like an organizational therapist, the ability of leaders to connect with their employees in meaningful ways and then work together, and that's where the magic happens.
Collette: That is beautiful. Wayne, I love i You and I share the same mission, and I get goosebumps here, and you talk about, like, what you have actually accomplished in that company?
Wayne: Yeah, it was, it was. It was amazing to see, when you pay specific attention to the quality of the relationship, people's desire to perform, just like children's desire to perform is dependent on the quality of their relationship with their parents, right? And so if a kid cares about what their parents thinks they perform for them, it's not any different than your employees. If they care what you as their leader, think about them and they want to please you, they will go to the moon and back for if you are a piece of if you are a human resource, if you are a tool, they're on your phone that they're looking for lunch, they're clocking out early. They're coming in late.
Collette: Yeah, so you're that makes me think of, really the it's almost like the investment, in my experience, the investment that a leader puts into their employees is directly reflected in the investment that they get back.
Wayne: So, no, it's exponential. It doesn't take, it doesn't, it doesn't take as much as you think it does, right? No, I can't tell you the number of vice presidents and regional managers that have said to me, point blank, I ain't got time for this. And I'm like, Oh, you're, you don't know what you're saying. It takes so little to get so much back? Yeah, right, yeah. I've shown them that and the ability to get engagement from their employees. I proved it to the entire executive team and regional management team at our company when I told them, I will, if you will give me your employees for two days, I will bring them orientation into orientation, and in two days, I will build a connection with them. That takes you months. And I from in two days, when we were bringing them in, they wouldn't make eye contact with you. They wouldn't have a conversation with you. And two days after, when they were leaving, they were telling you their life story. They were exchanging their phone numbers with me. One of my favorite parts was I would go to, I don't know, let's just say I would go to Jacksonville, Florida, walk into a retread tire center and have employees come up and go, Dr Wayne, and they would hug me on the floor of the retread center. And we're like, I was in orientation five years ago, and they're remembering the bond that we built in two days and Collette, they hadn't seen me since, yeah, doesn't take that much to get exponentially back performance, yeah, but you can, if you invest nothing, you get nothing back, right?
Collette: So I want to pick your brain about this. So you were talking about couples therapy and where you really learned about the emotional, energetic exchange, right? So how does that? How did you apply that in the work? Because it sounds like that's what we're talking about, like an emotional exchange.
Wayne: No, I did. I applied one of the things I did specifically was I applied that theory, Emotionally Focused couples therapy to the workplace and and I did some studies on that, and then I worked on it, and I applied it real life. I applied it in the corporate offices and orientation. I applied it in the field when I would go into the field. And it's really about spending a brief amount of time at the beginning of a relationship, establishing the word rapport, yeah, which is nothing more than a genuine connection, right? And that genuine, honest, caring connection is enough to make people feel valued. And when they feel valued, they give that back. And then what is withdrawal? And all the defense mechanisms that show up in couples therapy show up in employees when they won't look you in the eye, and they don't show up on time, and they won't have a conversation. You ask their opinion, and they won't tell you anything. It's the same that's called stonewalling. In couples therapy, they Stonewall you, right, they won't tell you anything. Well, employees do the same thing, but when you establish rapport, there's an engagement back and forth. Now they're opening up. They're telling you things, telling you the truth about what's going on around them and what, what barriers get in the way. And it's an emotional connection, right?
Collette: Yeah, okay, I want, I want to know what you think about this. So my experience has been that with leaders who are not confident in their leadership, that they tend to be overly structured because they feel insecure. This is very generalized, right? But this is, I've had this experience where there people want to lead well, and the last thing they want to do is feel like they're a sucker. And, you know, people are running over them. So they over, they over, utilize authority and control,
Wayne: Yep, and sometimes they under use.
Collette: So how do you get people comfortable with that beautiful middle part where you are still leading and you're authentically connecting with your employees?
Wayne: How do I help leaders do that? Yeah, you know, this is the tough part to describe. I find it really hard to put those on a website and and put it into writing, but it's really about modeling genuine relationship with a leader. I take what I used to do as a therapist, the quality of the relationship that I'll build with a client, where they would allow me to go in the most deep, painful places of their lives and help them figure out how to get out of there, right? Who Moved My Cheese? I'd go into the hole and then guide them out, right? Well, I'm going, I'm going with a leader, and I'm, I'm, I'm building genuine connection with a leader, and then I just simply ask them, so what's that? So what's this like for you, between you and me? Oh, I really like it. It's really good. Well, what did I do? Well, you just had a conversation with me. Okay, can you do that with three employees tomorrow? Instead of going in and barking orders? Can you take 10 minutes and instead of doing what many folks tell me, go in with corporate directives, you need to do this. I need to do this. I need to make this happen. We need to produce this. And can you just spend 10 minutes doing what you and I just did? I could do that all right. Here we go. Right. Yeah. Model it. You have to you cannot do what you have not experienced.
Collette: That's right, yeah.
Wayne: So one of the most, and this is hard for me to describe, when I'm selling my services, but it's about me showing you what genuine, honest connection looks like, and then you just duplicate it and it promise, what I promise you, and I've proven, is you're going to get better performance from your employees and from those teams when that becomes a way of being, because if you do it, then your team leaders are going to do it, yeah, and then they're going to do it, and then they're going to do it with their customers, right? We created, we created the Snyder way, going the extra mile, going the extra mile was nothing more than the tire tech on the side of the road. When he walks up to the truck, he doesn't just say, I'm here to fix your truck. He says, Hi, my name is Wayne Collette. I understand your trucks broke down. What can I do for you today? It's not a rocket science. It's a few minutes of connection, right, right? So sorry, this happened to you. This is, it's rough to have this happen. We're going to get you fixed in Yeah, it's about paying attention to people. You can't, you have to model. It has to be modeled. It can't, it's, it's a skill, and you can certainly learn it. Mm, hmm, can't read from a textbook.
Collette: Yeah, totally. It's experiential I totally agree. I think, you know, going back to the therapy background, it's like I used to talk to people who had grown up in abusive, yeah, environment and they're trying to have quote, unquote, normal relationships.
Wayne: They want very much to have a normal relationship, but yes, right? What do we say? Wounded people. Wound people, right? Because they're doing they do what they know, right, right? All your listeners know that they did not want to end up like their father or their mother, but what happened? They ended up exactly like their mother, man their father, because it's what they knew, it's what they were shown. Right? You have to show leaders what it looks like to have genuine, authentic, but high accountability, performance relationships with their employees. Yeah, I don't just know how to do that.
Collette: No. So where do you think that? What? Where do you think that things go wrong? And why do you think that you have to come into an organization and show people how to do this. Where are we doing this wrong? And the rest of the world in terms of like, colleges, schools, why don't people know how to do this?
Wayne: Because the business world has put this in a box. You know what box they put it in? What can you guess? What do they call this? What kind of skills are these? Leadership skills?
Collette: Oh, soft skills.
Wayne: They're called, right?
Collette: I call it that shit I don't know how to do.
Wayne: We put it in this box that says it's not it's not data. It's not on the P L, it's not on my balance sheet. I don't give a crap. I don't at time for this, I gotta make some money. I got, I understand that I'm on a business. I get that. Yeah, right. But what you've missed is that you're paying attention to all the lag measures, all the KPIs. You're not paying any attention to the lead measure. Yours, you're not paying any attention to the behaviors that drive your results, so you get stuck, right? We bumped it into soft skills, and then we said, That's not important. I don't have time for that. And then we don't teach it. Yeah, right. So in in therapy school, I didn't learn business. Did you learn business? No. Therapy school, I didn't learn business in therapy school, so they taught me the soft skills. They drilled it. They modeled it. I had to go through it. Had to learn to connect. They didn't teach me business. I had to learn business on my own. Well, we teach, we teach business leaders business, but they don't learn the soft skill. Yeah. So we we get in these all or nothing kind of paradoxes, and we leave part of it out because it's not our focus, right? It's a lack of balance. And we all know good leadership is about balance. Yeah, it's all about balance.
Collette: I think I have this. You probably have you worked with crucial conversations or that company. Yeah, so their influencer training really taught me that we overestimate that issues that we encounter in the workplace are due to motivation, and way underestimate that they're actually due to a lack of ability and when, when I'm thinking about these soft skills and how they're so missing at even higher levels of leadership and organizations, I feel like it comes to that ability issue where it's not like people don't know that this authenticity and connection actually drives performance and engagement. They know that. You think they know that we have the data, what I don't think they know is how to do it, and so they overly rely on structure like performance management and annual reviews to do the things that that.
Wayne: Yeah, but everybody's abandoning those. My company abandoned those and we tried to bring it back, and we did it for about two years, and then they threw it back in the trash can. Nobody wants to do performance reviews because they don't make any difference, because nothing changes, right? Well, they don't change because no one knows how to have an actual performance conversation, yeah, which shocked me. We're talking 80. We're talking 80 some managers across the southeastern United States. And I'm not exaggerating when I'm saying to you, very, very few, one to 2% knew how to have an actual performance conversation.
Collette: Oh, I know. Don't know how to have a performance conversation. I know. I know. But here's the thing. Wayne, okay, so we grow up learning how to communicate from our parents, and for most of us, that was not a 10 out of 10 experience. And then we become professionals, and we become leaders, and there are assumptions made that we know how to do it, but where would we have learned how to do it? How do people get those skills?
Wayne: I don't know that. What happens is that people recognize I am not getting, I'm not getting the results that I need from my team, and they don't know why. And then a coach like me gets in touch with them and says, Are you having trouble with your employees getting Yes, I can't. They won't do anything. Well, I might be able to help you with that. Really. How would you help me with that? Well, well, I can help you with that, right? And so then they have to engage somebody that can show them how to have those conversations by modeling that, yeah, and helping them to come through that. So it's still relationship therapy is all about quality what used to be. Now it's changed. But back when I was trained, I was trained that mental health transformation was like growing plants. You had to change the environment, yeah, in order to heal a soul, you got to change the soil that that, that it lives in, you got to change the culture. So we built this artificial container called therapy, and we put this person in this artificial container called therapy, week after week for a couple years, and they come out different. Holy cow. Imagine that, right? Well, you put a leader of 1000 people, you have an organization, you have a company of 1000 people, and you put the top six people in a container with a coach for two years, and the whole organization changes. Holy cow, yeah. Did that happen? Well, the leader changed, yeah, the leaders changed. And when the leaders change, it's like, if you wanted your children to behave better, then the parents have to behave differently. Yeah. Well, if the leaders of an entire organization start addressing their people, talking to them, meeting with them on a regular basis, asking how they are paying attention to their needs. Uh, then when they ask them to stay late or get up in the middle of the night and make that road call, they're happy to do it because my boss cares about me, right? My boss is there for me? My boss got my back. I got my boss's back, right? Yeah, if you got an adversary relationship with your kids, they're not doing squat.
Collette: Don't I know it, right? So what did you think? So I was saying, I think that the people, generally, my experience has been with the executive level that they don't often get feedback from other people anymore.
Wayne: They never get on they I can honestly say to you, once you reach an authority level, I watched it happen. I had I coached a regional, regional manager into the president role. Okay, as soon as they hit VP, people stop talking to him. Yes, right.
Collette: So do you think it's an ability issue? What do you think it's an ability issue, an awareness issue? What do you think happens at those higher levels where people stop recognizing or understanding how important these skills are?
Wayne: Okay, so I'm going to do my very best to avoid a political conversation, okay,
Collette: I'll do my best too.
Wayne: But the essence is that the basic dynamic of a power relationship is fear, not trust.
Collette: Yes, totally.
Wayne: So when a leader, even if a leader was your boss, when they become the Vice President, they now have the power, and I'm afraid of you, so I'm not telling you anything. I'm not telling you because it's going to come back on me, or I'm going to get fired, or I'm going to make you mad. Now, the essence of the relationship as soon as that regional manager that people loved and trusted when they were in the warehouse and on the retread floor as soon as that guy became vice president, nobody's telling the truth. Why? Because they're afraid. Because they're afraid.
Collette: Okay, they're afraid. There's okay. I gotta unpack this with you. Wayne, so there it's the same person. So this is like this person has a quality of being able to connect and relate, but you're saying power corrupts, ultimate power.
Wayne: Yeah, ultimately, right, yeah. As soon as they gain power, the relationship changes.
Collette: Mm, hmm, I can see that. I mean, gosh, what if? What if somebody told me I would never have to get feedback again? How would I feel about that? I'd like to say I might be sad about it. Honestly. I don't think I would like it in the long run. But I mean, if I wasn't required by anybody else to do it, but only had to be driven by my own internal motivation, would I do it? I don't know. Yeah, it's hard. That makes sense that the higher up you get, you know, you you're making different choices around it, and you have different choices.
Wayne: But you know what happens now? Now they're making decisions for the organization off of bad information, right?
Collette: Yes.
Wayne: Yeah, because they're only getting it from what people aren't afraid to tell them. They tell them what they want to hear. Oh, yeah, our department's doing fantastic work. Yeah, we're doing great. Yeah. And then then the numbers come out. How many times you seen this? Then the end of the month numbers come out, or, God forbid, the quarterly numbers come out, and they are not anywhere near what they were supposed to be, and no one knows why, because you just got lied to for three months, and everybody told you everything was fine and it wasn't fine. They weren't telling you the truth, because when you get mad, then they get scared they're gonna get fired, and then nobody wants to make you mad, so nobody tells you the truth.
Collette: Yeah, so fear creates compliance or silence? I'll say silence or compliance. We often take silence for compliance.
Wayne: Silence and compliance are they're friends. They are friends.
Collette: So what do you think the connected leader creates? What is trust?
Wayne: Trust. I'm a I'm a huge fan of Stephen Mr. Covey's book, Speed of Trust. Okay? He wrote a follow up book recently called trust and inspire. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. It's the comp. It's a comparison of command and control leadership versus trust and inspire leadership. It's brilliant.
Collette: Okay, tell me more. Like, I want to know more about what, what he describes.
Wayne: How, from the 1920s on, as we went in the industrial age, that we learned to manage people by telling them what to do. And then. Controlling their results. So think about all of the manufacturing facilities since Ford and Vanderbilt and all those people, right? They got the they got the they're up there in the big ceiling with the window looking out over the manufacturing floor. Yeah. And they are market orders, and they are given productivity numbers, and they are controlling and they are micromanaging. Yeah, so we learned command and control. So Stephen M R Covey tells a great story about how, for decades, this was the this was par for the course. Leadership was command and control. Military prime example, command and control, and then something happened, and that something was like Uber and then the pandemic, and people didn't have put up with that anymore. And so we had this thing called, what do you call it, the great resignation? Yeah. And so in the past 20 years, everybody knows, except the top leaders in the organization who were raised in command and control leadership, that people playing that game anymore.
Collette: No, do you know also, I think there's this qualitative difference in that when, when the performance management was brought into organizations, because, you know, it started in the military and we put it in organizations in the 70s, that was a that was progress at that time, but at that time, things were so different. Your manager was your primary source of information. They were your primary trainer.
Wayne: Now, if I want you, worked there. My dad worked for the same company for 32 years. He had one lawyer. He had one employer. My dad grew up in the coal mines of West Virginia. You lived you're, not only did you work there, your children and your grandchildren work, yeah, it was your whole life. The company owned the store. They owned your house that it, it was your entire life, yeah, well, we don't live in that world.
Collette: No, we do not. We do not. And in that world, annual reviews kind of make sense when you're year over year over year for 30, year over year. Pace of change is slow. But now if I want to know how to do my job, well, I have global experts at my fingertips who can teach me probably better than my own supervisor. So try to give me a top down performance review, and I it's going to be very hard for me to take as an employee, because I know,
Wayne: Yeah, except, for what you do, okay, what you do is point to what makes feedback effective. Yeah, it changes the whole game. If my annual performance review says, well, Collette, you did okay this year, you did really good, and I really appreciate you hitting these numbers and doing that you can do better at this. Do you have any questions for me? Okay, we'll go back to work and make sure that you do that, right? Oh my gosh, is that? Is that a performance review? Or is it not time?
Collette: No, that's a performance review.
Wayne: Yeah, if that's the feedback that you get, you don't get better, right? And so you walk into that performance review rolling your eyes, bracing yourself for 45 minutes of just pain, and you're gonna walk out with nothing that made you better. But if that manager can look you in the eye and say, Collette, do you know how many times that the products from your line came back. You know how many customer complaints I've had about you in the last six months? No, seven complaints. Really. I didn't know that. Seven complaints. Do you know they all had similar patterns? They've all said that you didn't make eye contact with them, and you didn't have conversation with them, and that you weren't really very attentive to it. So there's a pattern here. You see, I'm being very specific with you, yeah, if my feedback is very specific, and I say, what I want to do is get a plan with you and figure out how you're going to change that one thing, because you're going to be better. Company's going to be better. And if you can do that and you hit these marks, I'm gonna give you $2 raise, or I'm gonna give you you'll I'm gonna put a bonus out there for you, right? Yeah, that if your scores come back and you have a 92% only two people said that you didn't pay attention to them. I gave you a bonus. Now I'm going to reward that behavior. I'm giving you something to chase. Feedback has to be specific. It has to point to. Better, and you gotta align your compensation with it.
Collette: Yeah, all three.
Wayne: If that happens, you got a whole new world right now. People are chasing better. Who don't wanna get better, right? I want to get better. What we don't do is we don't give them the data, and we don't help them design a plan on how to get there, right? You don't compensate them for that, because all that soft skills now you got time for that,
Collette: And plus, the path isn't clear, like if, if it only takes people a couple of times of trying to do better and then hearing that they're not doing better and being unclear about what in the world they can do before people feel helpless and they just stop trying.
Wayne: I'm coaching a General Sales Manager of a car dealership. He has employees, and they just don't show up. They work for him. They're sales people. They're selling cars, and they just disappear on him. And I'm like, Well, call him up and ask him why. And he says, No, quit. He won't talk to me. I said, No, call him up. I bet he will. Calls him up. Long story made short, the guy got frustrated. He just said, I can't do this. I'm not being successful. He knew he wasn't being successful, and he was getting no help from the General Sales Manager. General Sales Manager says, Dude, I've been there. I know exactly what that's like. Come back. I will help you. He came back, he started hitting sales numbers.
Collette: That's amazing, right?
Wayne: Yeah, because the leader took the time to go, what's going on? What's the problem? I don't feel like I can do this and I'm not being successful. I know that feeling, what do you need to be successful? Yeah? He tells him, come back, and I'll help you do that, he comes back, he starts hitting numbers. The feedback had to be specific, right? Yeah, if they don't feel like they're going to be successful, they will just they'll either emotionally disengage, right? Brand new, brand new article in the Harvard Business Review this week on disengagement, what disengagement looks like. They either disengage so they stop trying, or they just don't show up for work. Yeah?
Collette: So Wayne, I want to know also about your most powerful feedback experience, yeah.
Wayne: So I told you this. I know you said it was hard, so I mean, you threw the chunk out for the former therapist.
Collette: Therapist, the hard question. I love it. So if you don't mind, I'm very particular about this, like talk about it in the first person. Go back there as a therapist. You know how to do this. Set the scene, set the stage, how are you feeling, what's happening, and then bring us in, all right?
Wayne: So I thought a lot about this. And okay, so I really went, I really went into the most impactful feedback I ever got, right? And I thought about these criteria that I was saying. When did I get feedback that was really specific, it was really targeted, and it really helped me improve. And so I've gotten lots of bad feedback.
Collette: When you say bad feedback. What do you mean? Like, not full or bad feedback?
Wayne: Is very simple. Okay, you're not doing what I need you to do. Collette, when are you going to do what I need you to do? Yeah, that is bad. I just need you to do it. That's bad feedback. Yeah, right, green, right. Or you're not performing the way I need you to perform it. I need you to perform the way I want you to perform. So you got 60 days to perform the way I'm gonna I want you to perform. Or we're I'm gonna get rid of you.
Collette: Mind reading all over the place. Yeah?
Wayne: Terrible, terrible feedback. It's not specific, and it does not point to a solution. The most impactful feedback I ever got was from a supervisor in graduate school, and I was going through a really tough time. I My I was engaged my wife's father. I really loved my wife's my wife to be his father, my future father in law, he, he impressed the living daylights out of me. He was, he was, he was good at, I thought he was good at everything. This man could do anything, and I was just so taken by this man. Well, to make a long story short, he succumbed to the pressure of sales and cut some corners in order to hit his sales numbers, and got in trouble with some ethical charges. Lost his role, and he crumbled. And I'm a 2527 year old guy, and here's this guy that I just. US thought the world of and he fell off his throne. And I was pissed.
Collette: Really,
Wayne: I was pissed. I could not believe he would do this. What the hell is wrong with him? Why? Why would he do something like that, and so I'm pouring this out to my supervisor, and I'm just venting. I can't believe he did that. I just I trusted him with everything he's I can't he just so disappointed me. And my supervisor looks at me, and he gets really quiet, and he lets me finish, and he says, Your my, your future wife must be terrified. Well, why is that said? Because her father just disappointed her, and her future husband's going to do the same thing. Whoa, what I will never do that. She has to see her dad in you in some way, or she wouldn't be in love with you.
Collette: This is crazy. Wayne, this was your boss who said that this was my
Wayne: This is my supervisor. Right now he's teaching me to be a pastor and therapist, right? But he has just put a dagger right straight in my heart. Now this is harsh, and I wouldn't necessarily say it has to go this way, but you asked me for the most impactful, yeah, feedback I've ever gotten. He pointed right at me and said, You have to be very much like the man that you're just complaining about, or his daughter wouldn't be marrying you. She must see him. You're he must, she must see you in him somewhere. And so if you're, if you do not pay attention to that, you're going to end up making the same mistake. You know what happened? What? 30 years later, at the age 50, I made the same mistake. I succumbed to the pressure of the corporate life, and I that wasn't a safe environment, and I had a battery with my supervisor, and I ended up burning out and shooting myself in the foot, and I ended up getting let go. Oh my god, and I did exactly the same thing 30 years later. Yeah, right. But the net result of that is I remembered that conversation, and it sparked the most dramatic change in my life, which is when I decided there had to be a better way to live than just driving, driving, driving to hit those corporate goals. Yeah, and so I started this business called PIVOT.
Collette: Talk about PIVOT some more.
Wayne: It's the PIVOT. It's, you know, you know how you're playing basketball, or you ever watch basketball.
Collette: I kind of, I don't know sports anything. Wayne, they're all your metaphors are going to be lost on me.
Wayne: There's a point at which all athletes are playing soccer. They do it. You're playing baseball. They kind of do it. They certainly do playing basketball. We think basketball driving down the court. At some point, you plant your foot, you stop dribbling and you start looking around for your next move. Something's got to change. Right forward momentum stops. You do some self reflection. I i was unwilling, as a 27 year old to do the reflection work, to prevent doing exactly what my father in law did was, which was, let the pressure of corporate life push you into to uncharacteristic behavior. Yeah. And so I had to do it at 50, and that was the pivot point where you got to do some self reflection, and you got to decide on what adjustments to make. So yeah, it was my pivot. It's what I now do with leaders is I help them pivot their leadership, and I help pivot their performance in their companies. But it's also a process. Pause, P, pause, take, check your numbers, check your results, do an assessment of the current state. I internalize. How do you feel about that? What's good about that, what's not good about that, what kind of emotional connection do you have to that? I the what? What do you want? What's the vision of the future that you want? What do you want to look different future, state, oh, operationalize that now, put that into a plan. And t put a timetable on that and lets you and I track it together. It's the coaching process. P.I.V.O.T.
Collette: I love that Wayne, right. It's the coach. Yeah, right.
Wayne: So we engage in that process as a matter of stop what you're doing periodically, take a look at. Yourself use the feedback that you've gotten. Could have saved myself a lot of heartache if I had said what exactly caused my father in law to behave that way. Yeah, succumb to the pressure of hitting his numbers.
Collette: At 27, Do you think you could have gotten that?
Wayne: Yeah, I do, yeah. I was like him in that I needed to succeed more than I needed to be healthy. Yeah,
Collette: Even at 27 you were there.
Wayne: At 27 I needed to be successful more than I needed to be healthy.
Collette: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so your reaction, you It sounded like you're you felt angry. You were really angry at your father in law, our soon to be future father in law, for this mistake and this, how did you end up without the hindsight that you now have? How did you end up resolving that with him in the moment?
Wayne: Yeah, so what my supervisor was pointing at me, is he? He had this phrase that he would use over and over again, and I didn't connect the dots until about 10 years later, when I did this day after day after day with other people in a change relationship called therapy. And now I call now it's called coaching for me, but in that helping relationship, what he would say over and over again is empathy precedes change. Yeah, empathy precedes change. If they don't feel you care, they don't care what you know. What he was trying to teach me is you need to put yourself in your father in law's shoes and stop being such an arrogant little right? Yeah, you need to stop for a minute and put yourself in his shoes and think about what drove him, and then you need to apply that to yourself. Well, I couldn't do it at the time because I just needed to be successful. Well, so did he. That's what we had in common. That's what my wife saw in us, is our ability to drive and make something happen, and she could trust that. So I couldn't do the self reflection that was needed. But that's what he was trying. That's what the feedback was trying to do, look at yourself. That's what all good feedback does. Take a minute and look at yourself, right, right? It sounds like this warehouse manager gets me on the phone calls. He calls Dr Wayne. Says this employee keeps showing up late. I'm gonna put him on the phone. This is true story. Puts him on the speaker phone, on the phone with you did he doesn't. He's in Jacksonville, Tennessee. He's a warehouse technician, and he can't get him to show up on time. And so he's so frustrated with he calls the Director of Professional Development, puts him on the phone and says, Dr Wayne, fix this. So I addressed the employee. I said, tell me why I can't get to work on time. Well, it's all excuses. Said, What time does your shift start? Starts at three o'clock. What time do you get there? Ah, 315 330 I got this. This happens well, so and so gets show up late. I said, What time does your shift start? Three o'clock. What time are you supposed to be there? 250 All right, here's the key question, if you were going to show up on time, what would you have to do differently to get there? I there's this long pause on the other end of the phone, and he starts brainstorming with me. Ah, now or now, we're on right now. We're brainstorming solutions. He's self reflecting. Why am I not able to get to work on time? Yeah, he starts self reflecting. That's what my supervisor wanted me to do, was to empathize with my father in law and do some self reflection. So this employee starts coming up with all these answers. I said, Do you want to keep your job? He said, Yeah, I need my job. I said, then you need to be at work. 250 not 315, yeah, of those solutions that you just gave me which ones would you like to try tomorrow? He picked two. I said, Okay, does supervisor? I said, All right, there's your accountability. So make sure that when he leaves work, you remind him that he's going to do those two things and he's going to show up to work at 250 tomorrow. I never heard from him again.
Collette: That's amazing.
Wayne: It was a phone conversation, yeah. What was the difference? Why could I get those results? And he couldn't, because the supervisor's feedback was, you're 15 minutes late. You need to be here at three o'clock.
Collette: Make it happen. Yeah, right, yeah. Just do it. Just be here. Right, right. The gap.
Wayne: Couldn't get him to self reflect. He couldn't get him Why am I not? I. Behaving or performing in a way that I'm expected? Yeah, that's the value of the kind of feedback that you're teaching people to do. Where it's constant, it's specific, it drives self reflection. Yeah, it encourages brainstorming to try some new things, to come up with new behavior that's all that all builds what Stephen Mr. Covey calls trust and inspire relationships. That's the new model of leadership,
Collette: Trust, and inspire trust.
Wayne: And inspire build trust, and then inspire people to chase something with you
Collette: That's right, yeah,
Wayne: Let's take the hill together, right? Yeah, let's hit this target, and we'll all benefit from, right.
Collette: Right. There's something that you touched on a couple of times, and I think even the word inspire really refers to it, which is a future focus. I mean, inspire. There is that with you, without a clear vision of what you actually want or not
Wayne: I cannot get leaders to create a vision. Yeah, they all, I got time for that. They all think it's speeches, right? They gotta give it. They gotta give a speech. They gotta get in front of they gotta be MacArthur, and they gotta give up, and they gotta give this great speech, but they don't understand what you're saying, like, you just paint a positive picture of the future that we're going to chase. Yeah, that's not more than just give them something to chase. That's right. We're gonna that. We're gonna do together.
Collette: That's right, right? I i found it really helpful for leaders to give employees, the our team members, the responsibility for designing how the vision looks in terms of execution through them, so that the leader has to kind of paint the bigger picture.
Wayne: They walk, walk me through that the see the CFO says you have to have a 4% increase on gross profit this coming year. How do you translate that into a mutual vision?
Collette: So I meet with my team as the CFO, and I say this is what we're driving toward. We need a 4% increase this year. Tell me how we're going to get it. And I I refuse to be the smartest person in the room. I want to hear what everyone else has to say. Who is closer to the work in a different way than I am, and have multiple people helping me solve the problem, because ultimately I choose, yeah.
Wayne: So, this is critical, so all the leaders that are listening to your podcast right now strategic plans come from the bottom up, not the top down.
Collette: Yes, amen, yeah, right, excellent.
Wayne: Now it's your job. It's your job to take the feedback and craft it into a vision, right? So you go back to your office, and you sit down, you think about all the feedback that you got, and you said, All right, we're gonna get a 4% increase this year by doing this. This is what the future looks like in the next 12 months. This is what we're going to be this is how we're going to be different, and this is the result that we're going to produce. You craft it into a vision, and then what you do with it.
Collette: And then you track it, you tackle it, you work it, you revise it. You continue to have the people who are doing the work inform you about how to stay on track.
Wayne: Yeah. So six months later, when the when the annual, the mid year report comes out, and you're at 1.5% then you go ballistic, right?
Collette: Not ballistic? No, we go, what do we what did we learn? What did we miss? How can we move forward?
Wayne: I mean, it takes the transparency then to go back to the organization, yeah, and say we were we wanted four. We're halfway there. We're at 1.5 right? What are we doing and what do we need to do differently? Take some transparency. I don't see a lot of that.
Collette: Well, it's scary, because it feels like your job is at stake. It feels like such an obligation for you to know how to do it as a leader.
Wayne: I think so the leaders on your podcast need to hear you saying, check your ego at the door.
Collette: Yeah, and I do think I think it stems from insecurity. I think it stems from not feeling equipped enough or good enough as a leader, and those are the leaders that I see who insist on making unilateral decisions, or insist on being the smartest person in the room, or insist on leading in like structure ways that that aren't honoring
Wayne: What if your MO, if your MO leaders out there is to command what we're going to do and control, manage. In order to get there, you have to be the smartest person in the room.
Collette: Yeah, true.
Wayne: If you're going to build trust with your employees, and you're going to say to them, this company really needs a 4% revenue increase. Some of the reasons I can tell you about, some of the reasons I can't this company really needs a 4% revenue increase if we're going to achieve that. How are we going to do it? What will it take to do that? Now you're trusting them with some feedback, right? Yeah. And then you're inviting them to chase that with you, which inspires them to join you, which is the definition of employee engagement, the number one, the number one word in employee workforce development is engagement, retention and engagement. Yeah, in order, in order to get that they gotta, you gotta be chasing something together. So, yeah, what you just described is that those, when those strategic plans to hit a target come from the bottom up, they're already in it was their idea.
Collette: That's exactly right. Wayne, I feel like you and I could solve literally any organizational problem with our family systems background, it's it's just so where people get stuck, it's so clear and it's so solvable, but you just Have to people just have to work a little differently. That's all.
Wayne: You just have to understand why people behave the way they behave. And, you know, I was training cognitive behavioral therapy, that's the number one therapy right now, but Aaron Beck, when he designed that way back in the 80s, had a formula for it that got lost. We skipped the middle of that formula. Cognitive behavioral therapy was invented with the premise that what we think generates an emotional reaction to what we're thinking about, and it's the emotional reaction that drives behavior. It's not thoughts automatically drive behavior that's not real, that does not happen. Thoughts create emotions, and emotions drive behavior. So we're back to leaders creating an emotional bond with their employees to go after something together. Yeah, it's still about it's still about the what people feel is what they do that's right. When we minimize that, we're unwilling to acknowledge that we end up with all kind of behavioral problems
Collette: And are confused as to why they're not happy, right?
Wayne: Why can't I get them to behave?
Collette: Yeah,
Wayne: Because you don't know what they're feeling. That's right. And in some instances, well, I hate this. This is not those listeners that are on this podcast today. In some instances, I don't care what they're feeling, I just need 4%
Collette: Yeah. That's a short term. That is not a sustainable way to lead, yeah, but for the short term, it can be effective,
Wayne: Yeah, which is what Stephen M R Covey says command and control leadership is effective in the short term, yeah, long term.
Collette: So Wayne, how can people get a hold of you? What's the best way to reach you if they want to continue this conversation?
Wayne: The easiest way to do that is I'm spending a lot of energy communicating what I do and how I do it on LinkedIn. So people can find me at LinkedIn, Dr Wayne Wilson on LinkedIn, they can also email me at lead, at coach, doctor wayne.com I don't have the website up yet. Eventually, I'll have the website up yet. But as I said, it's hard to put this on a website?
Collette: Yeah, it's a better conversation.
Wayne: How do you put this on a website? I know I'm still trying to figure out. I have completely confused two web designers trying to figure out, how do you blend, how do you blend, uh, with the wisdom traditions of Christianity with psychological psychology and emotional intelligence and to build high trust, really,
Collette: Yeah, that's really you should talk to mine. She's awesome. She might be fed up with it after she's done with me, but we'll do that. I really appreciate you from the I told you this before, but I mean it from the very first conversation we had, I feel just like a kindred mission and spirit here with what we're trying to bring, the healing and self awareness, I think that we're trying to bring into the workplace. Yeah, so. Really grateful for your time and just sharing your thoughts.
Wayne: Open360 is such a new way to do performance management. It's such it's such a new way to create a dialog that I surely appreciate what you're doing. I hope people will take advantage of that.
Collette: Thank you. Thanks Wayne and thanks everybody for listening.
Wayne: Thank you.
