GROWTH PILLAR: Leadership & Ops
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A simple four-part framework for leading a team, a behaviour-science approach to building new habits, and a clear test for whether you are actually leading or just bossing people around.
Most leadership advice gives you a list of 21 things to remember. Your brain can hold four. That is the problem Jim Salvucci is here to fix.
Jim spent 30 years in higher education as an English professor, dean, and university vice president before he founded Guidance for Greatness. On this Knack 4 Business episode, he walks Bernie and co-host Wayne through his Four Cs framework — Character, Communication, Compromise, Collaboration — and shows why each one only works when the one before it is solid.
Character comes first. If people do not trust who you are, your message lands flat. Jim uses the boy who cried wolf to make the point stick.
Communication is next. Message, audience, clarity. Clarity wins. Jim tells his students you cannot expect the reader to fill in your blanks. The same rule applies to your team.
Compromise is where most leaders flinch. Jim calls compromise a strength, not a weakness. The only thing you should never compromise is your values.
Collaboration is the payoff. Build the first three Cs and collaboration shows up almost on its own. Maintaining it is the harder job.
Jim also unpacks Tiny Habits — the behaviour-change system from Dr. BJ Fogg at Stanford — and shares the story of how one of his department chairs told him he had sent "an asshole email" and lived to tell about it. Plus the difference between a boss and a leader, why leading is teaching, and the idea behind his book Greater Than Great.
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Jim (00:21)
Question for the listener: How do you actually become the kind of leader people trust, follow, and collaborate with without feeling like you are guessing your way through it? Our guest will break down how real leadership starts with character, sharpens through communication, strengthens through healthy compromise.
and comes alive in true collaboration. He'll show you how to apply his four Cs framework to build trust, lead with your values, and transform your team, whether you're a founder, whether you're a founder, a growing SMB, small business, small medium business, or someone stepping into leadership for the first time. Our guest today is Jim Salvucci from Guidance for Greatness. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from his 30-year career as an English professor.
School Dean and University Vice President. Now for now refocused on empowering leadership. my gosh. Now we focused on empowering leaders in the corporate world. As a former C-suite higher education executive, Jim has mastered leadership as both a discipline and a practice, teaching leaders and emerging professionals how to align their values with organizational mission. His expertise in writing, communication, and leadership coaching.
Combined with certifications from Thrive, Tiny Habits, and Harvard's Institute for Management and Leadership, makes this approach uniquely impactful. With a passion for lifelong learning and a mission to help leaders live their values, Jim equips professionals with the tools to drive personal and professional and organizational transformation. He's also a repeat guest to the Knack for Business podcast. Jim, an absolute, absolute pleasure having you back in. Good day, sir. Do you have a favorite quote or saying?
⁓ I have so many favorites quotes in saying, Bernie, I'm not I'm not even gonna venture that. fail better, Samuel Beckett. but that you again, thanks for having me back. It's always wonderful to be here. ⁓ I'm a repeat guest, but I'll try not to repeat myself, but I invariably will. And that's okay. Jim, it's okay. Words of wisdom are never ⁓ are never shied away from, so it's always good. I'm gonna you what? I'm gonna let the boom arm swing towards Wayne and Wayne can kick us off.
Wayne, over to you, sir. I am so thrilled to see you, ⁓ Jim. You you ⁓ are really encouraging to me as a ⁓ as a fellow author and as a fellow reader, and I love that you are making I would say higher education available to the masses. That's I I think this is huge. And I wondered if you could ⁓ start with the four Cs. Tell start start us right at the beginning.
As in what are the four C's? Sure. Sure. Okay. So the four the let me let me back up just a little bit. I think it's important to understand that the human brain cannot handle more than four things at a time. Okay. At best. That's a good day. this has been studied. In fact, there's a a great study out of the University of Oregon. It's really fascinating.
The human brain can't handle more than four things, but it doesn't matter whether those forms four things are simple or complex. Isn't that fascinating? So it's the number, it's not the complexity, which I just find amazing. So I developed the four C's because I was looking at a lot of leadership advice, and it's the 21 this and the 10 that and the 15 that. You can't get your brain around that. You can't.
You you know, you're looking at all this list, and there's nothing wrong with the list. Everything on the list is wonderful. I agree with it. It's great, great wisdom, but it's impossible to really just take it and apply it. The four C's being a mere four things helps you understand leadership in a very, very simple way. I have a I I'm an English professor, you know, so I've done a lot of complex things in my life intellectually, but you know, ⁓ I'm a very reductive thinker too. And so I can
Boil things down quite well. And I boiled leadership down to four key elements. The first one, and they're progressive, by the way. So they're in order. So the first one is character, developing your character, who you are, you what your personality is, your values are key here. Another thing that often overlooked is your behavior. It doesn't matter if you think you're a good person, if you don't act like a good person, you're not a good person.
If you do act like a good person, you are a good person. Simple as that. another thing to consider is how others perceive you. That's part of the self-assessment, right? That'll tell you how your behaviors are coming across. That'll give you a very important feedback. So that's character in a nutshell. So who you are, developing that. So every leader needs to start with some form of self-assessment. If you're already leading,
It's always a good idea to check back in, even if you've done it before. Who are you? How do you behave? Are you living your values? How do others perceive you? That's your character. The next one is communication. You cannot communicate well without character. And let me explain that. Communication breaks down into three pieces. Aristotle had his ethos, pathos, logos. I talk about message.
Audience and clarity, which don't correspond one-to-one to Aristotle, but cover the same ground. Your message is key. You have to be saying something, right? To communicating something. What are you trying to get across? If your message has no value, then it's not worth delivering. Your message will have value if you have character. I use the example of the boy who cried wolf. And the boy who cried wolf.
There's a little kid on the hill, little boy, he's overlooking the sheep, and you know, or the hill's overlooking the town, he's watching the sheep. If a wolf shows up, he's supposed to scream wolf. He gets bored one day and just cries wolf and watches all the villagers run up the hill. It's laughing at them. Does the same thing the next day. They're getting pretty peeved with him. Third day, an actual wolf shows up. He screams wolf. By then, the villagers realize he has no character. His message has no value.
They don't move. They say, We're tired of this jerk. We're not gonna fall. We fell for him twice. We're not falling for him for a third time. The wolf happens to be a hungry wolf, eats all the sheep. In some tellings, eats the boy too, whatever. But it's a disaster. If he had character, this wouldn't have happened. His message, when he said wolf, they would know to trust him. So that's a perfect example of the importance of character in the message. The next thing is the audience. You need to have a fairly known.
And receptive audience. Now you don't have a lot of control over the audience. For instance, I don't know exactly who is listening to or watching this video, but I do have a sense, right? To some extent, you must be interested in the topic, right? If you've listened to me thus far, you must have some interest in what I'm saying. And so you're probably receptive. You're self selecting. ⁓ and so I'm reaching out to you knowing that much. Without that, my message just falls on deaf ears.
Going back to the boy who cried wolf. In this case, let's say the boy has integrity, right? The boy has a solid message to deliver. But the townspeople are a little bit different. They're not a good audience. So Wolf shows up, he screams, Wolf. The townspeople stay stock still. They don't move. Why? Well, it turns out they're kind of profit-motivated jerks, and they've insured the sheep for more than they're worth.
So they don't budge because they know they're going to get a payday and all the sheep get killed, and maybe the boy too. Because they're not a receptive audience. And he didn't know that. The third thing is clarity. And this trumps everything. This is more important than every other aspect of communication. If you're not clear, you're not communicating. It's just that simple. And you can't expect other people to make up the difference. I used to say to my students all the time if you write a paper and you think
Well, I didn't get that quite across, but he'll know what I meant. You were wrong. At that exact moment, you were completely wrong. It is not up to the receiver of the message to make sense of what you're saying. You have to make it as clear as possible. Going back to the boy who cried Wolf, he's on the hill, Wolf shows up, he yells out to the simple townsfolk, There is a large canine of prodigious propiscus and snarling teeth threatening our sheep.
And they go, what is he on about? I have no idea what he's talking about. I don't we don't know these words. And they just continue on their way and just think he's been hitting the sheep dip a little too much. So all of a sudden the wolf shows up again and the the sheep get eaten. Why? Because he wasn't clear. You need to be clear. And notice how that ties into knowing your audience. You need to be as as clear to your audience as possible. So that is communication.
Once you're able to communicate, then you're able to compromise. Compromise is transactional. It's a give and take. Everyone has to give, everyone has to take. There is no such thing as not giving up something in a compromise, even if it's disproportionate. One person may give up 99%, one person may give up 1%, but there's still a give and take. Without that transaction, without that sort of give and take, there is no compromise, but you can't have that.
without trust. How have you built trust? By having proper character and being able to communicate.
Once you're able to compromise, then you can move on to the fourth C, which is collaboration. Collaboration, I often make, I often make the distinction with competition. Competition, when you take it to its ultimate end, is zero sum. Think of a sports team, right? Unless you're into soccer or hockey, sports teams tend to win or lose, right? There's a winner, there's a loser. Even at the end of the season, there's a champion and then there's everybody else. There's one winner. That's how it operates.
That's the zero sum. And there's nothing wrong with that. And competition can drive people, but really that doesn't happen as often as we like to pretend. The thing that really drives people is collaboration, the opportunity to work together. And so the leader's job ultimately is to build a culture of collaboration to make that work. And how do you do that? Well, you need character, you need to be able to communicate very well.
And you need people who are able and willing to compromise. Once you get to that level, then you can work together. And it happens fairly naturally if you establish that groundwork. The tough thing about collaboration, though, isn't establishing the culture of collaboration. That's hard, but that's not the tough thing. The tough thing is maintaining it, keeping it going. And that means you need to revisit the other three C's constantly.
You need to look at your character. You need to look at the character of the people around you. You need to look, you need to make sure your communication is absolutely clear. You need to make sure that people are willing and able to compromise. And then how are they collaborating? So that is my very long answer to your very short question.
Well, you know what? Let me let me probe into this a bit more. I think it's really it's a great structure. Character. I'm gonna I'm gonna start with that one. Having a good character. It's it's fantastic. And how do you compare that? And there's there's a reason why I'm asking that. If you're living from the 1500s, good character would might be a little slightly different than it is now, or even 1950. You know, good character, right?
How do you know you're on track? And is it based on the social norm of the group? Is it based on society at large? And they're kind of what I'm thinking of here, sometimes some people will have hard love. You know, they they'll say restrict you from doing something now and you're going, but I want that. No, you don't. You really don't understand it. Think of teenagers, right? You're trying to tell them not to do something. ⁓ you know, yeah, it looks like fun, but you're not going to.
No, no, stop now because you're gonna you're gonna save your brain cells. How do you work that in so that you you know your character's on on target where it should be? And then how do you know it's good? Because a storm can be seen as bad and it's also can be seen as good. It all depends on you know where where you're sitting inside the storm or what the results are, right? Yeah, I mean you you bring up a good point. I mean, character is highly subjective, right?
I might see being focused on people as a great character trait. Somebody else might see being focused on profits as a great character trait. chances are they'll struggle as a leader. We won't go into that just now, but you know, there's that, you know, so they it can be highly subjective. How can you tell you're right on track? You can as an absolute. That's guaranteed. But that self-assessment, returning to that self-assessment, how am I behaving? How are people reacting?
Right. That'll tell you a lot. I might think I'm behaving in a way that is reflecting my values, but if people aren't really trusting that or they're seeing it a different way or they're reacting in a way that demonstrates that they're that I'm not, they're not really seeing my values in play, then I need to adjust my behavior because I'm not living my values. In terms of, you know, the storm may seem bad, but it might have a good outcome. That really comes but more back to communication than character.
If you've laid that groundwork of trust with character and you can move into communication, that's where you really need to be able to deliver that that hard message.
Do you also feel that there's a layer of I I'm probably complicating it a bit, but I'm also like it's if you're in the four C's and you're trying to make sure everything is as a true balance. Sometimes there's strategy. Like for example, when you're mentioning the villagers going, you know what, we have an insurance policy. Yep, carry on. We're gonna ignore you, in which case your audience is playing a strategy game. But people will sometimes try strategize a position or a communication.
⁓ you know, they're and assuming they're good character, they're not doing it with malevolence or harm to anybody, but they might be strategizing. So is is does strategy kind of layer into this? ⁓ like you know, I'm thinking back to the kids, yeah. Here's your five minute warning before it's time to go nap time, right? Before you hit the full resistance value. How does that play in? Yeah, I that's a great question because ⁓ again, a lot of leadership advice has to do with strategy.
Right. And I sometimes offer strategic leadership advice. I think the last time we talked, I was talking about the the ⁓ rule of third strategy that I use. You cannot make any strategy work for any length of time if you do not establish character, if you are not trustworthy. It doesn't matter. And I think a lot of people they want to see leadership as well, if I do these five steps, let's say, I do these five steps, I will be.
Performing good leadership. No, that's not how it works. Those steps might not be hurting you. They might be good steps. They might be perfectly sound. These strategies tend to be perfectly sound, but they're meaningless if there's no they're there, if there's no trust behind them, if there's no values behind them, if it's not mission-focused, if it doesn't appeal to people. Everything just falls apart. So you might get away with it for a little while, but eventually it'll just come to pieces. And I think that's what happens to a lot of leaders.
They look at the strategies, they think it's formalaic, they think it's a recipe that you follow. That is not how leadership works. Sounds like a sugar high. Lots of carbs, lots of cotton candy, and then crash. Yeah. And let me make it clear. I'm not saying that strategies are bad, but that's not that's not the leadership practice. The leadership practice is more fundamental.
There is a ⁓ Western movie ethic that seems to have dripped into the solopreneur. this all idea, no compromise, guns are blazing. If you compromise your weak, shoot first and you know damn the torpedoes. That is awesome in a black and white movie.
It's deadly in life. Is is that ethos still harming us? And how do we get through it? Yeah. Yeah. It's how it's harming us at every level in every industry in many organizations. ⁓ compromise. I use the word compromise. I didn't talk about this, but I like to talk about it, so I will. Well, I compromise can be a a dirty word for a lot of people. If I'm compromising, I'm giving something up. Yes, you're giving something up. You're making yourself vulnerable. God forbid you be vulnerable as a leader.
Right. I I you know it's you're you're betraying all leadership when you do that. you know, there's no actual leadership going on if you're refusing to compromise. You can't get to the next level. You can't get to the next level without that compromise. What's the point? But this idea that if I compromise, I'm somehow weak. What are you talking about? If you've done if you think that you've never compromised, you have no idea what you're talking about. It takes strength to compromise, it takes strength to be vulnerable.
You know, we talk about soft skills. I'm getting on my soapbox here. We talk about soft skills, right? Soft skills are the hardest skills of all. What a what a failure of branding that is. Soft skills. They're the hardest of all. And I can go on and on about that if you want. But when you compromise, you're reaching out to someone, they're reaching out to you. You're working something out. That's hard. That's negotiation, if you want to think of it that way. Okay, does negotiation sound better? Okay.
Negotiation's all about compromise. If you're never compromising, what are you doing? You're just bullying. Well, if you're bullying, you're not a leader. Right? Or you're being bullied, one or the other. you know, so that that's that's one of the difficulties here. you know, we we misunderstand that word compromise. But there is one thing I would say you should never, ever, ever compromise under any circumstances, no matter the consequences. And I've faced this myself, and I've faced some pretty harsh consequences.
Don't compromise your values. Don't compromise your values. Don't compromise who you are. Don't compromise the mission of your organization. Do not compromise those things. That might put you in some hot water, but at least you'll be a better person for it.
You know, just as as you're touching on that, I'm I'm I'm sitting back and I'm thinking, hang on. And I I I think certain values should be core el elemental. Others might shift. You know, it's almost like I I like the color yellow. And when you're going through house decoration and you know, yeah, I like bold colors, right? And then someone comes through and says, you know, Bernie, too strong, you know, unless if you plan on s ever selling your house, yeah.
How how do you kind of revisit going, am I on on target? Am I on track? Like, you know, I I I I might I love hot spicy food, but apparently in my household, apparently I'm the only one. what I find is mild, I'm looking at someone else going, they're they're they're you know, they're like, What why are you doing this to us? How do you how do you temper it so that either you have to adjust or you're going to adjust?
⁓ you know, the stuff that I liked when I was a teen, not so much so now. Yeah. You know. how does that play in? I'm I'm glad you brought that up. I I don't know that the spicy I'm I agree with you about spicy food. I don't know about if spicy food are colors because they're more preferences than values, but I get what you're the metaphor. okay. Let me be really clear. I'm saying don't compromise your values. That doesn't mean don't revisit your values. Yes, the values you had when you were younger.
Are not the values you had now. They will shift. And a lot of things will shift in your mind. And the values you have now should shift over the next 10 years. They will. If not, please, please, for the love of God, seek professional help. There's something seriously wrong. And I'm not being flipped here. This is true. You there is a psychological problem going on here. Human beings, and there are people who don't change, but human beings.
Change their minds, right? There's things that you you might be in love with someone when you're twenty years old, and when you're 35, you can't stand the sight of that person. That is a major shift. All right. There's nothing wrong with that. Or you might be in love more in love. Who knows? You might be, you know, th this is this happens and that's fine. The key is to keep that self-assessment going so that you're aware. You're not making changes due to circumstances. This is what's
Over time, yes, things change, but circumstantially, they shouldn't change just because you got a new boss, right? Or the job has changed. Something you're who you are should stay pretty fundamentally the same right now at this time. How often would you reflect then? And I and I get I get what you're saying, and I agree. How often should you reflect just to make sure you're
You know, if if you're sailing a boat and you go off two degrees start point, then you know, a hundred miles downstream or a hundred kilometers downstream, you're not like you're still two degrees off, but it's ma order magnitude is super big. How often do you check in to make sure that, yeah, you know what? Or is that a mentor? Is that where you have a mentor or a coach working with you? A mentor or coach could help, ⁓ obviously. I mean, anything helps. Also, feedback from your your team definitely helps.
But I mean, how often? I don't know. Every 29 and a half days. There's no set time. But i i is there like an internal indicator going, geez, I think I'm I'm I'm something's not, you know, the harmony is not where it should be, right? Like what's the what's the clue that's slapping you in the forehead that you're finally recognizing? It can be hard because you're in the midst of things, right? It can be really hard and things may it may seem like it's just this is what's happening right now. But a lot of it has to do with.
Having people, well, I mean, it could be a mentor, a coach, but often, more often, I think, it is your team members. They they're the ones who can give you that feedback. But you've got to build a culture where you're getting that feedback, where it's open, where you can hear things. when I was a dean at a university, I had a I I had this, you know, a number of faculty, something like 35, a full-time faculty. And
I thought I was doing a pretty good job, but I knew that I did I wasn't hearing everything. I had a number of direct reports, they were department chairs, and I empowered them to give me feedback whenever with you know, scot-free. Just tell me. I don't don't waste time, just tell me. I also followed very closely what is called the no asshole rule, which is a book by Robert Sutton, wonderful book, ⁓ Stanford Business Professor.
Check it out. ⁓ we followed that very closely. I gave that book. I used to have stacks of it in my office, and I would just hand them out. And it's true. People come to my office and take the no asshole role. and and the idea is that you're not acting like a jerk. Do not tolerate that kind of behavior from others and certainly don't behave tolerate from yourself. I empowered my my chairs to tell me if I ever acted like an asshole.
And one time I was in a cranky mood and I was rushed and you know, whatever, pressure, stress. It was a very stressful place to work. And I sent out an email to my department chairs, and I thought, probably shouldn't have sent it. Didn't go to hell. I'm sending that. And I sent this email, and one of my department chairs came to me and he said, Jim, you know how you told us to tell you if you're being an asshole. Well, that email.
was an asshole email. And I said, my God, Jeff, you're you're absolutely right. I'm so sorry. So then the next time we had a we had, you know, meetings once a week, we checked in, department chair meeting. I sat him down and I just said, I just before you know we start, I just want to apologize. I sent that email. Jeff told me I was being an asshole. He was absolutely right to do so. Please continue to do that if I ever do something like that again. No one remembered the email.
Why is that? Well, it turns out because they realized I was just in a bad mood and they just kind of let it go. Because it wasn't typical behavior of mine. You know, so that's a whole nother element. But I was so proud that somebody could come to me and tell me this. As an author, I would love to go to that signing where you're handing out that book to your to my favorite asshole. I would love to
Yeah. I mean it's it's but it's you know it's a it's an important thing to have that check in, have people who can give you that feedback. I also, when I was at that same institution, ⁓ I developed a survey where they could give me feedback anonymously. I did something on SurveyMonkey or one of those sites. it was and it was just I would just get aggregate information and they could answer my questions and then, you know, multiple choice and then leave comments throughout. And
I couldn't do this right away. It it took, you know, several years before I had enough trust where I knew that they were going to give me positive, you know, not positive feedback, they were going to give me valuable feedback. you know, they they could trust me not to to use it against them. I could trust them to tell me what they really thought. And I did not involve RHR in this because RHR was, I think the technical term is horrendous. And this would have been a nightmare.
⁓ if they got involved. So I just did this on my own. I used my department chairs to disseminate the thing. I had them communicate that this is totally anonymous. Don't worry about it. And then I took the results and I during a an all faculty meeting, I put them up on a screen and reviewed them. We went through and looked at the numbers and whatnot and what it meant. and I did that as an act of frankly humility. it was painful.
To do. Most of the feedback was very good, but a lot of it was, you know, hey, you're kind of messing this up. We don't like this. And some of the comments could be a little bit harsh because ⁓ some faculty members tend to be like that. And that's fine. You know, and I did that a few years in a row until I left that institution. I did that because that I I very proactively sought that because I wanted to make sure I was leaving my values and I adjusted accordingly. I wanted to make sure they knew what my values were. Could they identify my values? That was some of the questions.
Right. Could you identify what I was doing when I was doing this thing? they, you know, and they and by and large they could. So that was a positive thing. But sometimes you just got to proactively go out and create a space where people can tell you, can get in your face and tell you you're screwing up. That's all it takes. I think the two times that you have a real good chance for a mirror check are your birthday and December thirty first.
They're not in stone, but it's I think those are two handy check marks. I thought. My my birthday's in mid-January, so that wouldn't be that wouldn't be great for me, but maybe December 31st and June 30th. Yeah, I mean, right. And that's another thing. You could set a time. it's a good idea though to check in as you go along, right? It's a good idea when you start seeing
cracks, when you start seeing holes, when you start seeing separation, figure out what's going on. Sometimes it's not you. Sometimes it's the circumstances. Sometimes it's it's your your team members, right? They're not perfect. But you know, figure that out and figure out what you can do to close that gap.
Being excited about training in the 80s, it was all goals, goals, goals, goals, goals, goals, goals. Then this guy came called James Clear came along. Brilliant author. I know that you ⁓ think he has some academic weaknesses, but he told us about habits. Can you tell us about tiny habits and how they're way more powerful than goals, Jim? I would I'd love to have James Clear talk about tiny habits.
⁓ so Tiny Habits is a system developed by Dr. BJ Fogg, who's a Stanford professor. it is science-based. It's based on behavior. He runs the behavior change lab at Stanford. and it's it's pretty simple. What he discovered was that our biggest hindrance to habit forming is motivation. We don't get we're not motivated.
Even if you're motivated today, you might not be motivated tomorrow. I always use the example in January, the gyms are full. In February, the gyms are empty, right? People lose their motivation. And we beat ourselves up of I don't go to the gym every day. I must be doing something wrong. You miss one day, then you think I must be doing something wrong. And then you don't go again because you've kind of given up on the whole thing. So he tried to subvert motivation, how to do that. Another big discovery of his was that we do not form habits based on repetition and time.
Like we think. First off, I would argue, he doesn't say this, but I would argue if you're repeating something all the time, it's a habit, you know, it's so duh. But also, you know, there's there's all these schemes. I've heard 20 days to a new habit, 22 days to a new habit, nine weeks to a new habit, six months to a new habit. Why are there so many different times? Because none of them are true. You can form a habit in an instant. What locks in a habit?
It's emotion. There's some emotion. Good, bad, or indifferent. Good, bad, or indifferent, right? There's some emotion, something that locks in that habit that makes you keep repeating it over and over again. And it can happen per you know, right, right then and there. that's not frequent, but it does happen. So that's one of the things, the the other aspects. So with those two.
things in mind, he developed tiny habits. And the simplest way, and it's a very complex, if you read his book, Tiny Habits, it's a fairly complex book. It's worth a reread. You gain tons and tons of insight and wisdom from that.
What he did to subvert motivation was instead of just throwing yourself all into the thing, why not make the actual behavior as tiny as possible, as small as possible? Like a starter step or something that can grow. So instead of I'm going to go to the gym every day, make it, I'm going to put my sneakers on before I go to the gym, right? Like what's what's the thing you do to get ready to go for the gym? Well, something really simple and benign.
Put on your sneakers. Now, if you don't go to the gym, that's okay. Okay. If you do proceed to go on the gym, that's great. The habit isn't going to the gym, the habit is putting on your sneakers. Something has to trigger that. We call those anchor moments. It's usually some routine you already have, right? It might be after I walk the dog, I will put on my sneakers. Well, you probably have your sneakers on already. That's not a good example. After I finish lunch, we'll say, if I clean the dishes, I will put on my sneakers. Right?
So you have the anchor after I finish lunch, after I clean the dishes, the behavior, I will put on sneakers. The third aspect of it is the emotion. How do you lock that in? And to make it positive, we use celebration. How do you celebrate this? Now, you're Canadian, I'm American. North Americans, particularly the upper portion of North America, we're not so great at celebration. We don't.
You know, we we talk big sometimes, at Americans do, we talk big, but we're not great at celebrating ourselves. So you need to figure out what makes you feel that that notion of success. ⁓ BJ Fow calls that emotion shine, the idea that you're you you're feeling the success that you've just had in doing this tiny behavior. And that could take a number of forms. It could be anything from dancing around the room like a fool to sitting there and just having a, you know, very pleased.
notion of yourself quietly, whatever. ⁓ it it's all very, very personal. And there's ways of exploring how to do that. So tiny habits is just that, right? Just getting you to do something so small that it really can't fail. That it really can't go wrong. because what what's what are you losing? So if you want to do, for instance, I started a a habit where I had an anchor and
Then I wanted to start doing more push-ups, right? Get some more exercise. I started off with two push-ups. I could two push-ups. It's nothing. Right? I now do 30 at a clip. Right. So that means I do like 120 a day. 30 at a time. that started with tiny habits, because that's the thing. When you plant that seed, it grows. It just grows. If you're having trouble.
You you forget to floss your teeth, or you're reluctant to fl floss your teeth. Floss one tooth. Floss one tooth. Chances are over time you'll just start flossing. You'll just do it. It'll become a habit. It'll feel good. But you gotta celebrate it. You gotta feel that that that notion of shine, that feeling of success, that emotion of success. ⁓ you know, so this is how tiny habits works. In a nutshell, there's a lot more to it. A lot more to it.
It takes some coaching, it takes some thinking. One of the my key takeaways though, I'm 60 years old. I found tiny habits. I was working with a coach and she became a tiny habits coach almost five years ago. Actually, she's Canadian as well. she was she started doing it and she was she need she was doing an apprenticeship and she needed people to participate. And I volunteered and I loved it. And so I became a tiny habits coach. And
One of the things that changed for me in a big way was I was kind of raised to think that you are who you are in terms of just, you know, the sort of general things. You're if you're a cranky old dude, you're a cranky old dude. Right. No, I realized I could change lots of things in my life in really, really positive ways. I can make the choice and I can just start out real tiny. I don't have to make a wholesale change. I could start out with very, very small habits that
into something else. Sometimes they're just starter steps. Sometimes they're just a smaller version of the bigger habit, kind of like flossing one tooth. So, you know, that's the power of tiny habits. I love this thing because it has really transformed my life and it's helped me transform other people's lives.
Jim, something I know you're very excited about from other talks is the the ⁓ the the business owner who's leaving Solopreneur. He's all of a sudden got six people, he hasn't trained anybody, he complains about how hard he has to work. He says, you know, his staff are all infants. And when you ask him, he said, Well, why don't you teach him? He goes, I don't have time to teach. Tell me a story. A story?
About that topic. A story on that topic. ⁓ let me go back to higher ed again for that. so what I've seen in higher ed in the states and to a certain extent in Canada is that everyone's so busy they don't have time to fill in the blank. They don't have time to do this necessary thing. I don't have time to eat, I don't have time to sleep, I don't have time to think.
I don't have time to pause. I don't have time. Fill in the blank. Okay. And simply put, if you are not teaching, you are not leading. The person you describe to me is not a leader. They might have a title. They might have given themselves a title, CEO, big muckety muck, brand poo bah, whatever. It doesn't matter. They're not a leader, they're a boss. And I make that distinction.
There's a most people who are in bossing positions are merely bosses. They might lead from time to time, but by and large, they are bosses. Leaders are very conscious of what they're doing. They're very disciplined about what they're doing. And they execute it in a very vulnerable way, frankly. and so the reason I say that is because all leading is teaching, and all teaching is leading.
There's no real distinction besides the circumstances, right? The circumstances of you're you're either with students or you're with a team, whatever. The skills are exactly the same. So if you say I don't have time to teach, you're saying you don't have time to lead. If you're saying you don't have time to lead
I don't care. I mean, I don't I don't even want to talk to you. unless you're really interested. I I frankly, I don't want to work with someone like that because they're not, they're not educable. Right? You can't get them out of that. because they just want to be a boss. Okay. Well then everyone around you suffer, you'll suffer, the world will suffer. Congratulations, you've caused a lot of suffering. Leaders actually are teachers. Teachers are leaders. We don't think of it that way, but it is true.
You don't have to proactively teach. You don't have to get in front of a classroom in front of the group, but you're constantly teaching. You're using those skills. And again, it comes back to communication, empathy, things like that. These are things that teachers bring to the classroom that leaders need to bring. You do good teachers, and I'm talking about good teachers, by the way. They're lousy teachers, of course. But good teachers don't make assumptions about their students. They know their audience as best they can. They learn things about their audience, they listen.
That's a big part of communication, which I didn't mention. They listen, right? So the when when a person in a bossing position doesn't do those things, they're not leading. They can't. It's impossible.
if you're let's say in a leadership position ⁓ and you're not like three layers removed, if you're if you're removed by three, four layers, then you you can make a decision and it might upset the ⁓ the the community or the work work environment.
But if you're on a you know, you're the one level up in position to be the leader. And all of a sudden, you know, economic downturn hits and you know, ⁓ you can't sustain the staffing levels, for example. Or you have to change. Yeah, yeah, you have to do a pivot. And not everybody's keen on it. And it's like, you know, being told, well, today we all have to learn how to shovel the snow outside because we don't have the snowblower coming in and we need to keep the snow away.
How do you set up a boundary? How do you set up a it's ⁓ an unfortunate message that has to come out? It's it's it's pragmatic, it's not a matter of someone being an SOB or hey, read my book and don't be a don't be an asshole, right? How do you do how do you deliver the message so that you know there's a not necessarily reality check, but something has changed that's it's disruptive. It's not you're not gonna be appreciated. It's it's not appreciated, I should say.
Yeah, ⁓ golly, I never had to deal with that. shovel the snow? I'm being sarcastic. I've had to deliver a lot of a lot of tough messages and whatnot. Not number one, if you've established trust by being of sound character and you've established a communication style that people will understand, they might not like what they hear, but they're going to trust you to some extent. Right. When you go to them and say,
We've got a situation here. They will say, okay. They will. I've experienced this many times. They'll step it up in ways that surprise you sometimes. In fact, sometimes the people who step up are the ones who surprise you most, the ones who are first in line to help out. again, it's establishing that groundwork. That's what it is, establishing that trust. If you haven't done that, you can deliver that message and it's going to go whatever way it goes.
You might build a lot of resentment. Another thing is to show gratitude, and that's part of character, right? Being grateful that people are there, being grateful that when they hear a tough message, they'll live with it. Now, if the message is we've got to lay some people off, not just we have to shovel snow, that's gonna be really tough. But you need to make it clear to the people who are leaving that there is no resentment against them. You do. And a lot of places don't do that. You just get a layoff notice.
Because they're afraid of being sued, especially in the States. I don't know how it doesn't count. But here, everyone's so afraid of getting sued. Well, frankly, anybody can sue over anything. Whether they're successful or not, it's another case, right? ⁓ I could sue you for asking me a question, right? But it doesn't mean I'm going to be successful. It's a it's a waste of, you know, but everyone's like they can sue over that. So they so everybody thinks you just send the the discharge notice, termination, you're terminated, boom, goodbye. Right? There's ways of doing it that are much more general.
And then the people who stay behind, you need to assure them that their whatever security is available to them is there. And if again, if they trust you, they'll believe you. Now, if there is, if you can't say, look, we're not gonna have any more layoffs, then tell them. Be straight, be direct. Right? There's no there's no reason why, in fact, communication should be direct all the time. There's no distinction between being being direct and being kind.
We think that being if you're gonna be kind, you gotta beat around the bush. That's not being kind, that's being nice, and there's a difference. Kind is fundamental, nice is superficial.
So when you communicate, you communicate that kindness directly and quickly, right? You you you just tell people what's happening. Don't beat around the bush. Don't leave them hanging. There is nothing worse than not knowing. When I was when I I I'll go back to when I was a dean. It's funny, I haven't talked about when I was a vice president. There's a whole nother thing. But when I was a dean, which is when I learned a lot of these lessons, I had a policy of what I call radical transparency.
I would tell my people everything I was allowed to tell them, no matter what. Right. So unless there was some prescription, like it was a personnel matter or the upper leadership told me, not leadership, the upper bosses told me, you know, you may not tell people this. I would tell them. I if I weren't explicitly told, I would tell them. Why? Because I thought they wanted to know. And it turned out they did. I had a fellow dean who I used to mentor when she was a department chair in a different school.
I often mentored people outside my own my own realm. ⁓ when she became a dean, she decided to go all in on I'm a dean. And she argued that her faculty didn't need to know bad news and all the stuff that's going on because, well, they don't need to be burdened with that. But she how did I know this? Because she was complaining to me that her faculty kept going to my faculty to find out what's going on and then go to her to complain that she didn't say it. But she blamed me.
And I said to her, it's you. You're not telling them, well, I don't think they need to know this. Well, apparently they want to. They want to. You might want to listen to that, right? Not what you think, but what they think. You're not their mommy. You know. And so you don't get to decide what they hear and don't hear, you know, because you you think what's better for that. You don't get to make these decisions. That's that's crazy.
But she insisted. and you know, I as far as I know, she never changed that that that way of thinking. I thought that was ridiculous. ⁓ I thought that was absolutely absurd. And quite frankly, it was not infrequent that her faculty would come to me and say, I wish you were my team.
There's an author we both there's an author we both know that has a book title that has leadership in it or greatness in it. Would you give me ⁓ maybe a brief synopsis about that book and how to get it?
I'm sure you're not talking about good to great. ⁓ possibly. Yeah. So I I guess you're talking about my book, which is greater greater than great. and the the book, I mean, this it's a series of essays. There's 30 essays in it. The title comes from the introduction, which was actually based on ⁓ the eulogy I wrote for my father. And it's about how one can be good.
But not great. And that somehow becomes greater than what we call greatness. We measure greatness by notoriety, right? How well known somebody is, how powerful they are, how rich they are, how famous they are. ⁓ that's how we think of greatness. If you read the obituary of someone who is a great person, it's all about their accomplishments and the statues and their honor and what's named after them and all this stuff. But that doesn't mean they're a good person. And it doesn't mean at all that they're a good leader or a great leader.
Leadership is about being good inside. Being a great leader is about being a good person. My father was a very good person. He has flaws, everyone does. But ultimately, he won't he was always looking out for other people. He was a nat he he he loathed bullies and he would go to the mat with bullies. And I I learned that from him. I've had that same issue. I I can't I can't tolerate bullies. and so he he would go to the mat with bullies to protect other people. And
You know, I learned from that that that inner goodness made him greater than many of the people we consider great. So that's the basic premise of the book. And then the essays lay out a lot of my ideas about leadership in various ways and how to be good, how not to be bad, and you know, how to how to be sharp about things, how to think about things, and how not to fool yourself. Those are the four basic sections of the
And you can obtain it on Amazon. It's called Greater Than Great.
Bernie Franzgrote (41:40)
though you're an academia, a very, very serious guy in a serious world, tell me about maybe some of your non-academic retreats.
Ever done anything fun musically? Have I done anything musically? Well, I I I'm learning to play some instruments, but I'm actually a it's well it is academic because I'm a Bob Dylan scholar. I write papers on Bob Dylan, publish them, and I I go to conferences. I'm actually contemplating writing a book on Bob Dylan. so I'm a a big Bob Dylan fan, and I know a great deal about him and his music and his lyrics and so on and so forth. So I spent a lot of time doing that as well as my
leadership stuff. And there's a tie in there to a certain extent. ⁓ so there I I wrote an essay a while back. I s actually saw Bruce Springsteen in concert, the boss. And I hate the word the boss because that's not leader. But watching him interact with the audience and watching him interact with his band, it hit me like a bolt that this guy's a tremendous leader. The boss is a great leader. Bob Dylan, not so much. He's more of a boss. So they're misnamed.
He tends to push his band around a little bit on stage and, you know, we kind of yell at him sometimes. You see him get cranky. You know, he is eighty-four years old, so we'll give him a little space there. But he he he he he can he reacts to them very different way than Bruce Springsteen, who seems to really enjoy their company and they adore him.
So the four C's, ⁓ would that be a band name now that you're gonna offer? And how would that how would that play out? Who plays bass or bass? Who plays if you're fishing? So, you know, I I I you you told me this question in advance, I'll tell everyone that. ⁓ and I was I thought about it for like two seconds. let me start with drums. Okay, because that's the heart of the band, right? If it's a four-piece band, you you gotta have the drums.
Well, that's gotta be character, right? It's kind of in the background, it's behind the drum kit, it's making a lot of noise, but people don't even see the drummer back there, right? That's what character is. It's in the background, it's working, it's keeping everyone on track. If you if the if the drums loses loses the rhythm, the whole band falls apart. If they aren't following the drums, the whole band falls apart. The drums are actually absolutely critical to the band. And
Character is absolutely critical to leadership. In terms of, I think the question you you asked me was bass, right? I would go with compromise there. Because like the drums, it actually keeps the rhythm going. Your ability to to to give and take also has a rhythm to it. So that makes sense. So the rhythm section would be the the would be communication and compromise. In terms of the singer, well, duh, that's communication, right?
So it's gotta be words, communication. But that's but that is it. I mean, with when the singer's out there, they're delivering the message of the song. Well, that's what communication is. So that one's pretty simple. Who's playing guitar? Well, the only one left is collaboration. And that makes sense. Collaboration is kind of the stuff that we see happening, right? They're doing the funky leads, they're out in front of the band, they're maybe the band leader in the end, but
They're they're kind of, you know, that's what you're going for as a leader. You're trying to build a culture of collaboration. And the guitarist is what makes the band special. If you just had the singer, drums, and bass, probably not such a great band. You know, think of the Who, right? That's a perfect example, right? You have four members. Well, imagine you didn't have Pete Townsend playing guitar. You just it would be a, you know, it'd be an okay band, I guess. It'd be a little weird. What's the melody? Who's holding the melody? Well, that's collaboration. There you go.
Perfect. And
Jim (45:09)
And if we want to reach you, just to tell you how awesome your book is, what's the best way to get a hold of you?
please send ten dollars in a ⁓ so unmarked bills. That's right. So ten dollars us, by the way. so the ⁓ you can reach me. My my website is guidanceforgreatness.com, guidance for greatness, all one word dot com. You can read my substack, which is Jim Salvucci.substack.com. My last name is S A L V U C C I.
⁓ and that is and my substack is called On Leading with Greatness. And my book essays actually co originated as blog and podcast posts. You can also find that as a podcast on YouTube and sub and Spotify and Apple and other podcasts platforms. and then you could also just email me at Jim at Jim Salvucci.com, sensing a theme here, huh? So that's that's pretty much it. And also LinkedIn. You can find me LinkedIn.
I want to say thank you to Jim for giving a really good conversation. Both Wayne and I appreciate it. to my co-host Wayne. Thank you, sir. And you, the Knack 4 Business listeners. This is a really good session. ⁓ understanding the four C's and what not to do and what to do. More focus on what to do than what not to do should should follow naturally. And if you haven't guessed it yet, Jim helps people lead.
And lead better and stop guessing about it and start aligning with their character and the communications and their values for outcomes that you want that everybody wants.