Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Achieving Results: Todd Davis on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Leadership
Tue, 03 Dec 2024
Right About Now with Ryan AlfordJoin media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential.Resources:Right About Now NewsletterFree Podcast Monetization CourseJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelVibe Science MediaSUMMARYIn this episode of Right About Now, host Ryan Alford sits down with Todd Davis, a seasoned leadership consultant with nearly 30 years at FranklinCovey. Together, they explore the enduring wisdom of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, unpacking its transformative principles for personal and professional success. Todd sheds light on foundational habits like being proactive, envisioning outcomes, and prioritizing effectively, while also sharing insights from his experience as a Chief People Officer. He discusses the delicate balance between employee satisfaction and client demands, as well as the profound influence of leadership on organizational culture. This conversation highlights why Covey’s principles remain as relevant and impactful today as ever.TAKEAWAYS Importance of effectiveness in business and leadership. Role of organizational culture in employee engagement. Insights from "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People." Definition and balance of effectiveness in leadership. Responsibilities of a Chief People Officer in fostering a people-centric culture. Balancing employee needs with client service. Understanding employee motivations to enhance engagement. Impact of leadership on shaping organizational culture. Timeless principles of effectiveness and their relevance today. The significance of listening and understanding in leadership. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE. Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding. Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the mission of your company and why is it important?
What I have found, Ryan, is once everyone understands the mission of your company, it's easier to get them excited and highly engaged in doing whatever part they have to move that mission forward.
This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.
What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about what's important now. Hey, you know we're always right, too. Well, at least our guests can be. I don't know if I'm always right, but I've always got an opinion. And, you know, here's what I know. There are some things that are tried and true. And I really like effectiveness. I love it because I own a business.
I love for me to be effective. I like for my listeners to be effective because that's us helping you. And that's why I've got leadership consultant. And he's he's. You know, I've been a part of a book and a guide and coaching. You've probably heard of this. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He is Todd Davis. What's up, Todd?
Hey, how are you, Ryan? Thank you for the invitation.
Yes. Hey, I like effectiveness. You know, I mean, anybody that's been with the company as long as you have has to know a thing or two about that, if nothing else, right? Exactly. Exactly.
I'm not perfect at it, but I at least have the instruction manual.
I know if we all, you know, what do they say? But doctors sometimes have the worst health habits. But, you know, but something tells me you've got as being, you know, the chief people officer for the number of years that you've been or were. And now, you know, leadership consulting, you know, I'm sure you apply a lot of what you teach, if I had to guess. I do. I do.
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I think myself, I'm 47, and I think our audience, we skew, we have it all over, 25 to 50 skews male. I think if you're anywhere in the last, in my range or around there, that book rings familiar, if not been on the reading list. I mean, it's just, it's really stood the test of time, hasn't it, Todd? Yeah.
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Chapter 2: How do the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People remain relevant today?
But we both started laughing because, to your point, the book's been around forever. But this young college grad was just finding it so empowering and so useful today. And so, yeah, it's a timeless classic, if you will, because it's based on principles of effectiveness.
Yes, exactly. And I do think – In a world where with YouTube, the proliferation of new media, we have all these tactics at hand, right? There's all these things to do and lots of people coaching what to do. But you can do a lot of things and not be effective. It's a really key component because I think sometimes we get in the tactics habit and the check in the box.
But it's like, what was the outcome of all those tactics? That's what I've always loved about the book is the effectiveness. Yeah.
It's so true. I like to explain it as if you visualize the compass over the clock is how we get effectiveness. In other words, yes, it's important to get a lot of things done, and it's important to get things done within a timely manner, but what are the things we're getting done?
And are we getting those things that are really going to move our lives or the lives of our team or our organization forward? And so it's the compass first, you know, the direction we're headed over the clock. Clock's important. Got to have deadlines, but let's make sure we're heading in the right direction first. And that's how I think of and how we define effectiveness at FranklinCovey.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's another quick story just because it's happened in the last couple of weeks. We are just launching, you know, we update the content or the course, not the book itself. We don't change how many habits there are, but the application of those we update in the courses we teach about every 10 years. And we just launched our new Reimagine 7 Habits course.
And I was in another city in a hotel delivering an overview event. And this woman, her name was Sylvia, a worker in the hotel, she came up when she learned we were from Franklin Covey. And she said, I'll be right back. And I thought, okay, did we not pay our bill last time we were here? What's going on? And then she came back with...
With the Spanish version of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, it had been weathered and used up, and she carried it around in her purse, and she went on for, I'll tell you, 10 minutes, telling us, my colleague and I, how this book had changed her life and how she lived. led her family with it. Now it helped her in her career. And it was just it was inspiring.
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Chapter 3: What is the balance between serving employees and clients?
So I wrote a book, became a bestseller, not because anybody knows who Todd Davis is, but because this topic was so profound, and it's the question you asked. The book is called Get Better, 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work.
And my whole premise in the years that I had almost two decades experience as the chief people officer was that as Jim Collins, the leadership guru says, you got to have the right people on the bus. That's true. But it's actually, or and I should say not but, and it's actually the nature of the relationships between those people. that makes teams and organizations effective.
And so in my role as chief people officer and anybody who's head of their human resource function, I view this as you're more or less, sorry for the sports analogy, but you're more or less the quarterback of the culture. Everybody, it takes everyone to form the culture, but you're the person who really reminds people, helps to set the vision for where you want the culture to go.
including what we call things. Like you said, we can put a marketing spin on things, but I was adamant that we not call it human resources, that we call it people services, because I wanted the team that I led to be reminded every day as they came to work, they were in the business of serving people. the people at Franklin County. They're clients for all of our associates.
And then I wanted the role to be chief people because I wanted to be the grand poobah, but because I wanted to remind myself, is this about the people? Sometimes people equate the term human resources with kind of the policy wonks or the necessary evil we have to have to keep all the human resource laws and guidances and all that.
And those things are important, but it's really about partnering with people your team, your colleagues to move or grow the business and be, as you started out, be effective in what you're doing.
Yeah. And it is supremely important. And, you know, one question I want to have for you, Ty, that may not be expected. And I, but because I want to transition to kind of, you know, back to the effective, we'll get into all, but it's, when I think about
chief people officer and me being you know ceo and owner of multiple companies right i see what sort of happened and i've seen interesting comments from even like you know top google executives like the pendulum like if you own a when you own a company you serve clients right but when you have a company you need your people and you need to serve them to help you serve the clients
And I've seen even a few of the executives that have come out that said maybe it swung too far to serving the people versus the client. Yeah. And talk to me about the balance of those two things.
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Chapter 4: How can leaders enhance employee engagement?
And so it's taking the time and a lot of leaders, I don't say don't like this answer, but they realize, okay, I've got to slow down and I get, I've got to get to know my people.
what's important to you Jim what's important to you Sam what's important to you know what motivates you and if honestly if I talk to a Jen or a Sam and they say all I care about is money making money well then they're probably not the person for my team because I want to find out what part of what we do excites them and make sure that they understand how critical they are to that so I'm kind of going back to what I said a minute ago but when the pendulum is way over there to your point
I think you have to slow down. Dr. Covey used to say with people, fast is slow and slow is fast. Take time, understand what excites them, what motivates them, what energizes them about the business. And then make sure that they have enough of that going on so that they feel this ongoing connection with the work that you're all trying to do to move your organization forward.
Yep. And I think that's fair. And I do, I love the, it's actually very tactical advice of the mindset of, Figuring not making assumptions and that that one little trigger of, you know, not making the assumption. But if you presume something, you tend to make it true. You know, presumptions are effective for one thing.
And that's, you know, verifying what you already think, but not necessarily getting to the bottom of something. Yeah.
That is what you just shared, Ryan. That is the foundation for the seven habits. Before we even get into the habits, we talk about our paradigms or our mindsets. And if I, for example, if I'm a micromanager, okay, everybody can relate to that. But if I'm a micromanager, how do I see my team? We call this the see-do-get model. Well, if I'm a micromanager, I see my team as incompetent.
And to your point, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I see my team is incompetent, well, then what do I do? I do everything myself, or I hover over and criticize everything they do. And if that's what I do, what kind of results do we get? Well, we get pretty poor, mediocre results at best. And then what do I say to myself as the micromanager? See, they are incompetent.
I've got to micromanage even more. And to your point, it just becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy of what I'm seeing versus if I see people as capable and talented... Well, then what do I do?
Well, then I take time to get to know them and what's important to them and what inspires them and how do I motivate them and make sure that they connect with our larger mission and then it goes on and we get greater results. So, sorry, I'm passionate about this.
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Chapter 5: What role does organizational culture play in effectiveness?
And you know what it made me think? Todd, it was – I'm on social media a lot and thinking like leadership coaches that I see and variations of quotes and principles. 80% of it has spun out of that book, I think, because – and those top-line thoughts. Now, I'm not saying people are copycats. They've added their sauce on top of it or whatever. But those core principles –
Capture a lot of the overall sentiment of what drives sort of effective behavior.
Well, you know, Ryan, that's a really good point. And they are copycats, but Stephen said he was a copycat. And let me clarify, Stephen made the point all the time. He did not invent the seven habits. What he did was. And I had the great honor of working with him for many years before he passed away about 12 years ago.
But he clarified what he did was he identified those people and those teams and those organizations that seemed to continually be getting ahead in a good way, getting the results they sought to get.
And he studied what they did on a consistent basis, and then identified those principles that had always been at work, but that, you know, he just identified them, named them as habits, and put them in a construct that we could talk about them and start to implement them in our lives. So he even made the comment that he didn't invent them, he discovered them.
And so I think all of the iterations that different people use, they are just yet different ways to look at these lifelong principles that will always be in effect. Yeah.
Yeah. And I just think it's, you know, you can choose the response to any situation. I think it's so powerful. Like all of those rang true. But I come back to that one because I think about I think about myself at times. I think about like what I see, you know, like. We we've we've empowered a lot of things but ourselves at times.
And, you know, we we give power, apply power when we don't realize that we get to choose, you know, whether you're biblical or not, believing in free will, you know, the power to choose. And and I think we've. Conditioned. We've been conditioned or at times maybe that, you know, it's out of your control. But man, it's empower.
It's the way we empower people is for them to understand that statement.
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Chapter 6: How can understanding employee motivations improve business outcomes?
It's so rare that when we find someone who will do that, we can kind of come to our own conclusions, including the person, the employee who has kind of been in it for themselves, you know, with that pendulum swung too far. If you really listen to them, they will start realizing on their own, oh, I've kind of been all about me and what's in it for me.
And I haven't really been thinking about how do I contribute to the organization I'm a part of. And so you couldn't be more right, in my opinion, in my experience.
I love that. Talk to me. What are some of the nuances maybe that have changed as far as application that maybe people wouldn't be familiar with?
Yeah, so just the practicality, it's always been in our courses, they've always been practical, but even more so, this development team that put this together, they have focused intently on, okay, you learn this fire hose of information in two days, and it can be spread out, or it can be taught concentrated, but regardless, you have all this information, it's so amazing, what do I do with it?
what do i do with it and so just the practicality this this seven habits 5.0 there are things that i can take away that afternoon or that day and start applying them this this may sound uh too simplistic but there's an activity we do in habit one you know be proactive i can choose my response and they take these statements around they think of a situation in their life that is challenging right now maybe it's a relationship maybe it's a project and they write a statement
I well I can't dot dot dot I can dot dot dot so well I can't change the project that I've been assigned I can look for some additional resources that have expertise in this area to help me so it just tries to start training our mind to think of yeah I can't I can't change but there's always something I can do I can influence so that's just one example of the practical nature
of the activities that they're doing and I've had I've been teaching this for a couple weeks now it just launched October 28th I've already had email upon email from participants coming back saying I cannot believe how helpful this was I was able to overcome this big obstacle I was able to get the team thinking about this differently so it's just it's just the practicality I would say is the most insightful thing of this newest version just the relevant application and how I can use it in the challenges I'm dealing with today
Todd, as we finish up here, talk to me about the types of companies that you're helping, you're working with. What's that ideal profile? You know, what, you know, for someone listening that, you know, could benefit from your services. I mean, if nothing else, we better have sold another, you know, million books. But, you know, go back and read because I circled.
I've got an old copy somewhere. I know I do.
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Chapter 7: What are the timeless principles of effectiveness?
I'll tell you. Well, my fifth wife, she told me that I had begun. No, I'm kidding. But you're right. We have betterment family division. But even without that, and this is selfish on my part. I've been here 29 years and I've got a long ways to go. I'm a working project. But the way the seven habits has impacted me personally as a partner, a husband, as a parent, as a grandfather personally.
As a neighbor, as a friend, as a son, as a sibling, it's profound. And so I say that when I say selfishly, yeah, I've been paid and I have these great positions and I've had these great roles. But the personal development, just being around this content, and obviously I work for Franklin Kevvy, so I'm proud of this. But I would tell you this even if I didn't work for them.
It has had and continues to have a profound effect. And I've got a long ways to go. But but to your point, absolutely. It impacts every part of your life, both personal and interpersonal and organizational.
I've listened with the intent to just listen, Todd, and hopefully our our audience has as well. Where could everybody learn more about what you guys are doing, the programs, the book? Obviously, the book's easy to find, easy to Google. But, you know, give me some links or wherever we can lead people.
Easy to remember. If they'll just go to www.franklincovey.com, that's C-O-V-E-Y, V as in Victor, franklincovey.com, they can find, there's a search engine there. They can find anything they want there, including more of me if they're a glutton for punishment.
franklincovey.com, seven habits of highly effective people coming from the chief people guy, Todd Davis. Todd, pleasure having you on.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Again, I appreciate the invitation.
Hey, guys, you know, to find us, Ryan is right dot com. We'll have links to seven habits there. The Franklin Covey dot com website and all the highlight clips, full episode of the video. Go check it out on YouTube. Fast growing YouTube podcast, business podcast on the planet over there. Let's do it. We'll see you next time. All right. About now.
This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit RyanIsRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.
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