Episode 49: Chris Hutchinson - Secrets Of Being A Great Leader And Building Strong Organizations

0:07 Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to another episode of Role Models gz conversations with beautiful humans. I'm Jennifer Norman founder of the human Beauty movement and your host, this podcast thrives on your support. So if you like what you hear, follow us radis reviewers, share this episode with everyone, you know, across your networks. So, I have a question for everyone. Who's listening Listening, do you consider yourself a great leader, a great team, player, both or none of the above today, we're going to talk about what it takes to rise to the occasion, and make your presence bigger in your organization and in your life. My guest is Chris, Hutchinson, Chris is the founder of trebuchet group, a certified B corporation. That helps bring out the best in organizations and people. Now Chris calls himself and abundance influencer, he helps coach and mentor People on building effective leadership skills, and great teams.

1:04 Welcome Chris. Thank you, Jennifer. It's wonderful to be with you. I am delighted to have this conversation. It is so important because I would say, it doesn't matter who you are or what you do. You could be a young student, you could be the CEO of a multi-billion dollar Corporation. I think there's one thing that all of us humans have in common and that is the frustration or the fear of not living up to our potential. Would you say that you would agree? I absolutely do. I think that's something whether it's on the surface or deep within that. A lot of people are trying to figure out how to be enough and how to be with others and be enough. Yeah, yeah. Now I want to wind it back to 2002 when you started the trebuchet group, what was it that caused you to think?

1:45 You know, I think there's an opportunity to help people with leadership and with organizations. Well, that's such a good question and I'm going to have to wind it back a little bit further. So when I was graduating from college and I was a brand new wet-behind-the-ears mechanical engineer and a Tenant in the US Air Force, I went through ROTC to pay for my degree. I was on a team where there was the leader. Well, it was really challenging, I would just tell you that the environment on the team was, keep your head down hide in the grass, you know, don't put yourself out there because you're going to get criticized. And if you bring any bad news, having forbid things were going to be bad. And I was thinking my four-year commitment was like a four-year sentence. I'm in trouble. Yeah, this is not what I thought it was going to be and luckily things change in big organizations.

2:26 They have rotate people through and I get put on a different team essentially. And this Steam was hey, I'm really strong at this. You don't seem like you've got that, let me help you and I noticed that you have a superpower here. How can we harness that lots of communication? Lots of open, is it was amazing? I mean, I jumped out of bed, wanting to contribute feeling great. And the reality was, I said, I went to a different team, a different team was created because one person changed on the team, the leader changed and I realized it didn't matter how good of an engineer. I wasn't any of my colleagues. If we had a leader who wasn't helping bring out the best in us getting Clarity and helping us communicate like on team to team one was really not. I was depressed. I didn't really enjoy coming to work at all. Team two, I loved contributing and I would do whatever I needed to do. So that influence me through the Air Force and through Corporate America and in 2002, our leader at the time, it division a Motorola dropped us from 3,000 people to 20 and 18 months, 20, they were technological challenges in the Mark was hard, but it was really a leadership failure.

3:22 And as I got out, I thought, okay, great, I have a severance, this is a gift. And what do I want to do with this? How do I want to take these learnings? I've done and help other people, learn them not as a guru sitting on the hill, but as a partner beside people, helping them discover what they need and perhaps, giving a tool here or some advice there or bolster here, so that they can be their most excellent self as a leader and enable that in others. It's so fascinating. How the tone and the spirit of the leader makes such a difference. Everywhere. You go. It really is said, everybody is looking up to that leader for cues on how they should be, what the tone is of an organization. And You know how people are going to operate. Can you tell us what in your opinion are the traits of our great leader?

4:06 Well, I think great leaders really I think do an able in a positive way. The best within others right now our team is a set a goal for the next year we set one as an intention and figure out what are we going to do besides the work that we do how are we going to continue evolving or accompanying each other? And our goal is thriving in our sweet spots so it means as a company as individuals where the place is not that we get to live out there all the time. Do only the fun things but How can we tap our strengths? And so I think really great leaders. Are they understand their own strengths first of all. So if I understand my strengths, I will see your differences as your strengths, not as I'm normal. And if you're like me, you're normal, and if you're not, you're abnormal, you know, a lot of people don't really realize their strengths. So knowing those strengths being able to understand what my path might be, not as a rigid step, but where am I going? And how might I invite you along with it for as long as we get to go together?

4:54 And then I think it's a lot around being, how do I develop trust and really give trust first as a leader. It's not well, Wait, till somebody is trustworthy, how do I become vulnerable? And open to what we need to do together? I'm learning just as much, maybe even more than the people that time, quote, have air quotes here leading, when I have that deep connection with them, I believe that I will equip you, and uniquely for the thing rather than treating use a cog. Here's the roll, this is what this person does. Like how can you make that role seeing how do we equip that we get the best for everyone? And then finally, the last part. So I know myself, I'm really working well with others and enabling the best and then we all turn towards the Organization. And that's where we say, well, what's effective, what's the right things to do? And then eventually we figure out how can we do those really right?

5:36 So efficiency. So I think the pieces that make a good leader, a lot of companies come to come the other way. They start with, let's be efficient. Well, that didn't work. Let's reorganize, we need to be different and effective. Oh, that didn't work. I didn't give you the tools that you needed. Well, that didn't work, as I didn't treat you as anything more than just a blob, you know, human resource. And if those things aren't happening, then it comes into me. Am I in the right actions around, the things that are challenging, difficult and important? And then if I'm not there, do I know myself? So, I think I've told you the path one way through and the path lot of organizations sort of show up with. Yeah, fascinating back. When I was an MBA students, one of my favorite classes of all time was organizational behavior. It's so weird. It was brilliant because it was a social experiment, the class divided into two different teams and there were two different classes and so there were four teams total and we had to create an organization come up with a product.

6:29 Or service and sell it. And at the end, it was, you know, whoever made the most sales with whoever was the most functional organization. And a lot of the top items that we had learned in the class, we had to put into actual real term practice. And so it was fascinating because you definitely saw the dysfunction in certain groups and at certain times of stress and moments, you saw the rise of what we would consider either natural-born leaders or the ones that Rose to the challenge of wanting to actually take that front and then other separately. Great followers. And it was just interesting to see how quickly all of that had two bills because by the end of the semester, you're going to get graded on it. And so I often think you know this predated a lot of virtual TV like Survivor and whatnot and you were living it, you are just watching it.

7:18 We were living it. We were absolutely living at but I was just curious from your standpoint because I used the term natural-born leaders and I think about some people would say yeah, that there is this inherent gift that some people Have maybe it's the first born child or do. You think that there are any specific traits in humans that make them better leaders just inherently? Or is it a skill that can be learned? Yes. So that's the short answer is, both is our true. The, in fact, the most inherent trait for a really great leaders, something that I don't think many people in they think of great leadership would put together, but I was challenged one time. Because in my book, I wrote down, you know, everybody's a leader. You know, I think of my five-year-old, son, bouncing across the couch.

7:58 Cushions my to Daughter was following him doing exactly what he was doing. We imitate. We look at things, you know, that's the way that we as humans kind of learn and work together and the person's like, I don't think that and instead, could anyone be a great leader? Really? Good question. I think that the most important thing for a good leader, anybody can be a good leader. Anybody can walk through them techniques and, you know, follow the self discovery and learn all this stuff. But really if you don't like people, and you're not willing to sort of do hard things in the service of something bigger, you're probably not going to be a great leader, you'll be okay, leader, you'll do. All right, I think that's That's what the core of leadership is. I'm willing to I'm not doing this for me to set on a big Golden Throne and take, you know, hors d'oeuvres. It's more of. I am in service to something bigger and I'm inviting you to do the same and I'm with that there's all sorts of things. I'm going to do it because and I have to, like people in some way and care about them.

8:47 People are people. They are tough. I had a client was like you know, if my people were just so people, everything would be easy. I'm like, yeah, you're right. And that's the way that we're getting, it's done, right people. The thing that fascinates me in the organization Behavior, Your stuff that I've done some things here and there in terms of taking some classes is that everybody is completely unique. I mean I get to see so many people and everybody's unique and at the same time, there seemed to be a limited number of patterns that we fall into when were in groups, you know, I could probably I think there's a book on my shelf and says the nine, major plots and everything's just a subplot of that for screenwriters or somebody's, right? It's kind of that way with roots of people as you said, there's certain things that emerge and people to step up or step down or somebody's like I'm going to bleed through an intellectual superiority or whatever. No, those things just sort of happen and people interact around them and those patterns aren't infinite. There are a small number.

9:35 I never judge people on the never go. Oh, that's the pattern. I say hmm, looks like it's might be coming up. What sort of things might be helpful here? How do we help everybody be their best selves. When it might be clearly apparent, people are mmm. Now, as far as the clients that come to trebuchet, is it usually the leader of the organization that says I need help or is it human resources or is it you know somebody else within the organization that says we need help? You've been through this Jennifer I can tell. Okay so I would tell you the most effective places when the leader or the couple of senior leaders come together and said you know what? We think this team has more capacity and our organization working past and we are exercising and we want to be part of whatever we're going to do the ones where HR comes and says oh my God we're struggling you know everything's trying to do it. We're having a hard time in the frequently the leaders have a shadow a blind spot that's hunting affecting the organization and people don't have the authority to say hey you have a blind spot not that we walk in and say hey we have once we actually rather than talk Talk about what's wrong. We like to say, what are we doing great? What could be better?

10:33 What's getting in the way? Let's go. And so we have a very positive perspective to support leaders Egos and to people's Egos and says, you know, we're not bad. We're doing the best we can. Even if it doesn't get us what we want, and it's so exciting. When we have a team of people that discovered, what change in Behavior, how they're going to work together, the clarity that they needed, everybody's the same in the room and we now can get to where we need to go and that's really fun. So it does require. We've had some people that come up and say you weak you know, you got to go fix somebody, we got to fix this boss. We have this fixes Then I say, you know, as a recovering mechanical engineer, I can fix things. I don't think people should be or could be fixed now. If we create conditions where they want to shift their behavior and that supports where we're wanting to go, I think that we could have a better situation. Mmm. Now when you start working with an organization, a client, is there a specific Playbook that you use to get to know what the situation is and then how you're going to address and be able to work with them on going on whatever it is that they wish to achieve.

11:28 Yeah there's a lot. Of different doors that people come to us in different situations. Yeah, I said Limited in some ways in the patterns, but the situations are always completely, you know, the same company and has two different things going on or two different companies, that same thing going on. So there's a couple different doors. We go through, one of them is that the model we're not getting the results we quite want. Maybe there's friction on the team that's you know, heating up or are causing problems. Maybe they've lost some good people and then so they say so we would ask questions of the person approaching us. Let's say it's HR. You say, hey, we don't know. We're trying to figure out if we could be better. All right, let's talk. About what good would look like and where your, let's then go talk with the leaders and see what they think is possible. And then, that would be the Q. Usually involves the senior leadership team.

12:08 Because if the senior leader and Senior leadership team, don't shift the organization, can't move, it can't change, you know, you could train everybody on something. And it would just go back to the way it was because that's the reinforcing Behavior. So it's really good. When those folks show up, sometimes they'll look at themselves and say I can tell that I'm not, you know, I'm in a place. I've never been before like oh I don't know a pandemic hybrid work, why don't? To see people or people that have been hired that I never even physically met. That's really challenging for weatherization that didn't start in remote and you know how the heck do I lead in this. So sometimes it's those kind of things. So we're exploring in that case. What is the organization need first? And what is the leader deeply want to connect with that and grow themselves. Because if they're growing then the organization can move towards that space versus you know, we don't do the go fix them or go do that to them.

12:52 Recent post by Seth Godin said there's people who do things for people to people and with people and I think that's a leader. The I do things for I serve overdone that becomes like you're dependent on me if I do two things to you. I think that's a position of like I'm better and I really I frankly I really don't like that at all and so we are never in that space. We follow a lot of clients that deal with Consultants who have done the things to them. I believe it's doing things with people and so if it was the team we might talk with the team and say, hey, what's going on? Well what's not going well yet? What's missing are unclear and then we bring those results back anonymously. And say Here's Where the team kind of is, what would that mean? Would it benefit to? To have Clarity around what's our deep purpose and what are the ways we live it out otherwise known as values and what's going on that we need to do better and then what does that mean right now? For me so there's sort of this Cascade of from the high level of connection all the way down to how am I doing? Or it might be.

13:44 One of the things we do is called goal. Focus team building where we help people experience, without trust Falls and squishy toys are helping people experience. What it's like to be vulnerable with each other, to really get to know each other in a short amount of time to in service of the business. Not again, touchy-feely, I work with a lot of me. Engineers and they were just run from the room, right? You know, touchy-feely. But if you're like, well, if I know your strengths and, you know, my strengths, we probably could get better together like, hmm. Okay, we have more healthy conflict. Our commitment is deeper than to the goals that we've decided on. And we can hold each other accountable. We don't have to wait for the boss so that the results we get our Collective first. So I just threw a whole bunch of stuff off our individual tool belt at you Jennifer. But and we really try to meet people where they are and walk through shared discovery of where we could be and what could be getting in the way fascinating. You know, I worked for a A number of larger companies earlier in my day.

14:33 And I remember one specifically and these were, you know, large Fortune, 500 companies, very successful, one of the companies, the human resource manager, would typically say every organization gets the results that they are set up to get. Yes. And I thought that was a fascinating Insight. It was also intriguing that in a number of these large organizations that were just killing it in terms of financials, you know, Profitable year over year growth, all of that, the people whenever we would do these reviews and, you know, the self-assessments, not terrible, terrible morale. Terrible work-life balance itself that they needed to practically murder themselves in order to get everything done on time and to the rigor that they want to.

15:19 Because they felt that that was their measurements, their ruler of success, you know, how much am I bringing in for the organization and at what cost I think that? Because we've all been through the past few years that we have there's been a shift and a lot of that. And we're now talking more about work-life balance. We're talking about mental Wellness, we're talking about well-being from a holistic perspective. We're getting more into the things that I think that the men that you're used to working with we're typically run from the hills you know we're starting to get more into the touchy-feely. I wanted to just ask you like what are some of the changes that you've seen happen and that leaders, that of maybe it has?

15:59 Kind of leadership style or mindset that worked very well for an extended period of time might be like, oh, things are changing, I don't know if I'm comfortable with this. How do you walk somebody through a whole shift? That happens with Millennials and gen Z years coming into the workforce. No, that's just, it's such a simple question. Jennifer, this is so easy. I'm do we have. Yeah, how much time do we have? Yeah, I'm trying to think the places to go. So you asked about how to help somebody threw this in sort of the shifts that are happening. And then, in a way you hinted at The let's see what if I could heard it called domestication, I think is Don Miguel Ruiz tells we get domesticated, we get trained to be a certain way and so a lot of times I will tell you as a sideline when we have people that come to work with us like directly like is part of our team.

16:45 Usually, it takes about the first year almost a year and a half till we can help them unlearn those self protective behaviors and holding the shiny. Cut out in front of us and just saying I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything's okay. So it really I think I feel honored to and privilege to be able to lead that by saying, today's been kind of hard and I'm struggling with this and I'm tearing up about something that matters a lot, there's touchy-feely that's artificial and there's real genuine presence in connection. Where we human with each other? Which can look emotional? You can be that way. So Google did the Aristotle project. I don't know if you've heard about that, that was where they measured hundreds of teams and found out. What was the thing that made the biggest difference in the team's performance and head and shoulders above. All of them was emotional safety.

17:27 So, psychological safety, I could be me. I I could say this is a hard day or I'm struggling because my dog is dying or, you know, anything could be happening, so you can hear that. Connecting with what you just asked is like, well, how do you have these people that are showing up, like, work needs to be my community, work needs to be, especially in the pandemic. I think a lot of people were collapsed down to who were they interacting with most? Even it was online. I need a counselor. I want somebody who can coach me, not only in what I'm doing here at work, but how that fits into the rest of my life? And I think there's a lot of people who never signed up for that, right? They barely know what they're doing. In terms of I just go to work. I do my work right those people are I think moving on out of the you know because that was sort of generational and I think there's an opportunity for leaders to say can I be in touch with what's important to me safely not spreading it on people spring it on people but safely in a way that allows that for other people and what's really cool Jennifer is that the people, the leaders, who do that the men and women who do that, they get to a place where they're enjoying their experience significantly better. They'll like, you know, I'm sleeping better. And I'm having this good stuff.

18:28 I don't usually go directly to lie. Let's do counseling. First of all, I'm not a counselor. I mean, we do a lot of work recovering engineer done this for 20 years but we talk about what's great in the business and what excites you about that? So there's a connection there but it's kind of like the business reason for doing it. And once we do that, then people start seeing oh you know what the business got better, when I was more in touch with what I could do. And I can honestly say, hey, I tender for, that's a better idea than my or I screwed up or Jennifer, I need your help. I can't do this, you know, then we're a team then we're able to be more than the just strong pillars. That normally teams are so I think it's an opportunity. For people who have had different leadership styles to sort of step back and decide, what do they want to happening in the world? And how do they want to step into that? And having support to do, that is really important. Because like, if it's just me, I'll do what I do. And if it's different, it's hard and I probably will slide back to, where they, the way I do it.

19:14 Hmm. I don't know how much it answered that really tough question there. Ya know you did a great job with that. Thank you. Now, for all of those leaders of organizations, or leaders of households, that might be listening. We talked about being able to All to be vulnerable. We talked about working with not to and in some cases for but in a balanced way, what are some of the other things that people can say, you know let me stop and think about, you know, what, my behavior is or what I'm projecting, what are some of the things that you've noticed really help in perhaps the shortest or the least amount of time. Another killer question sum up all this experience. That's what I'm doing.

19:59 Just be like, okay, what's the next question? She's gonna give me great. So, how do I get in touch? I think I would say the most important thing is to be curious and listen, mmm, I think those are the two if I bought it all down to curiosity, and not in the luxurious, why the hell you're not doing this? That's not curiosity. We will say that the curiosity like, real genuine honest, curiosity and listening and I think when that connection you can find, people people want to be heard and people want to be able to be understood. Stood and have their ideas considered. They don't have to have the way that things go doesn't have to be their way but if they're not any of those above like I'm not listen to. I'm not appreciated in any way. Yeah, I'm going to either show up and just kind of idle like quite quitting or I'm going to maybe fight back which those people are actually easier to redirect than somebody who just disengages because they care.

20:48 That's why they're fighting back, right? So let's what are we cool? You fight for together? And one example I can give and I haven't had the privilege and to listen to a lot of your other episodes. I'm sure you have some really cool Role Models. Have you heard? Could be Thea. Yeah. So I could be Thea is an amazing coach and I think diversity consultant. I'm not sure she was on a brene brown podcast and she talked about this. So at the core of this way to deal with the really tough issues of like, I feel oppressed, or I'm doing things that people are feeling a pressing or we're not honoring each other microaggressions, all the things that can happen, most of which are unintentional, at least on the conscious level. I'm not intending to hurt anybody rather than calling people out. She went through this practice of calling people in and there's Curiosity and listening in it. So the way it starts is if let's say you said something and it kind of hit me and I was like, Wow gosh, you know, but you're the boss Jennifer and I just I just have to suck it up. Or unlike do I fight back and my Frozen, like, what the hell? And if I can stay in curiosity, that keeps me out of judgment because you can't be curious and judgmental. The same time, it's really important. Good thing.

21:47 And so, if I'm curious, when I say Jennifer, what were you? Hoping would be a result of you sharing that information, or asking me, how can we get a real facilitator here? You know, whatever the comment would be if you were the leader and I've done this like literally with people's Sitting around me in the room and just done that and said, I'm really truly curious is not a technique and then I listened and you say, well, I'm trying to make sure, you know, I think we're doing good things and whatever, you know, and I'll probably feel the sting lesson if I understand your intent. And then I can say, okay, thank you, Jim for that helps me. How open, would you be to hearing how it impacted me initially? And then I would say, yeah, I felt like, what am I doing here? And I must not be a real facilitator. And then I thought I'm in one place and if that wasn't your intention, you'd say holy cow.

22:28 Wow, I Know that that would happen. And then we can both say, well, what do we want to do going forward and that Curiosity and listening and the connection? I can't tell you how powerful that is for anybody in any circumstance. I think is one the most powerful tools I've ever had in helping a line people together. And what are we trying to do? And if you indeed were like, well, I think you're a shitty facilitator. You're not very good and you need to go and we need somebody who can really do this. Thank you for letting me know that. How can we set up the? I'd like the team to be okay. I would literally do this in the middle of a room because I think to me as a leader being vulnerable is Very important. And there is times we've seen this. When as a facilitator, I'm not the leader. And yet, I can set the example. If I am vulnerable in front of other people in a way that supports what we need to do, they essentially just got a little way to say, oh, I'm gonna be able to do that too.

23:14 I'm very often, it's the CEO really needs. That example, our could benefit from that because, oh, you don't have to be perfect. Oh, you don't have to have every answer. Oh, you could look to the group for help because that's what I'm doing, facilitative Lee, and those are very effective ways to connect and lead people that is Is so fascinating. Yes, the listening and making sure that you understand what was just said and understand what was just heard at the understanding. Underneath the listening is so key because then you can really get to the humanness of what's going on in an ordinary situation which would otherwise be, okay. I'm going to put the vinegar on and be like, oh, thank you, I respect that. And if you don't build those connections, you don't get curious enough to really dig into the meat and the Heart of what those Jews.

23:59 Our. And if we're asking people to commit a piece of their lives for this and hopefully in a purpose, based organizations are there to commit a piece of their life to this. If I'm as a leader helping enable that, why would I go anywhere else? It's not a golden handcuffs. It's an environment where we are being the best with each other. Yeah. And guess what, when things matter a lot, I'm going to be emotional, it's going to be harder, I'm going to be more stressed, you're doing more stress. So having ways that we can work through that and use that stress to push us forward, rather than beating up on each other or one person pull Lean back, always and the other person like you always works for me. I wonder what's happening for you and until that person says no, I refuse. I'm not going to accommodate any more. I'm now participating in my own diminishment I'm not going to do that anymore and that's usually not fun.

24:41 When that happens, I mean, it's important. But rather, how do we do that almost all the time? Like hey what are we doing together? Hey, what are we doing together? Hmm, I'm going to switch gears because I've heard that we were talking to you mentioned just earlier about Purpose, Driven organizations, and I would say that Purpose Driven organization From the soul of the person who founded the company, as well as the leader, the CEO, they know that they have a higher calling, they know that they are out there for, not just profits, but also for people and the planet in most cases. And so from the perspective of having an ear to the ground or understanding the heartbeat of their organization, I would imagine that that comes a little bit more natural and you yourself are the founder of in purpose-driven organization in that.

25:29 You are a certified V Corp. Can you tell us? What do you think, sets people apart or sets organizations apart that are Purpose, Driven versus others that might not be and why you yourself decided that you wanted to be a purpose-driven organization. Hmm, you know, it's really fun. I'm going to play with just for a moment here because I had somebody talking about conscious leadership and purpose-driven businesses. And I said, you know, if you're trying to invite people in sort of hinting that they're unconscious and not Purpose, Driven is probably Out a way to help them feel like I think I'm a conscious leader because I'm awake and even Enron was a Purpose Driven organization not in the way that we're talking about and they had a very clear purpose of what they wanted to do together and it was incredibly destructive. That's it.

26:11 I know we're talking about Positive Purpose, we're talking about things that enhance people and planet and really thriving in an economic way. I think you hinted at the answer. When you said this company was started from the soul of someone. I think it's a deep connection to meaning and I think we're all wired for purpose. I think a lot of times. We get that. Domestication that says, no, you're actually here to consume, that's your purpose or your here, to do some grow grow. Grow like a cancer, that's your purpose. But ultimately, I think when we can strip away some that conditioning, I think everybody really wants that. I so the people that are more in touch with that of like why am I here? And what's this sort of change that I would like to make in the world versus? I just need to get through the days and make it by Weekend. Those are the folks that I think have the opportunity to say. Here's a purpose.

26:54 I'm about bigger than me. Would you like to join? How would you like to help? And so, that's a different kind of Coming together then I need a job because we do and people need housing and you know the economy works you have to have money so people are going to do that and yet how can we invite people into something bigger? I think those people that would like to see that for themselves and for others are the ones that usually do. That meant certainly me you know I definitely it can be more of a good thing too much of a good thing so caring for people and trying to help them if it goes too far, that's rescuing, I mean a rescue you I'm going to do things for you even if you could do them yourselves, I've had experience with that, I'm recovering Rescuers, well family systems and things and I was looking For the best Within Myself and others. And when I started finding that giving myself permission to be, who I was, it was very I was like, in fact when I got out of that thing, I said, you know, I've been doing the same work inside these very large organizations like you described and it did do some really great things and I think I helped a lot of people and I was always limited by the power structure or if I, you know, it's like well yeah, he works for us. He would say that or cheap.

27:50 Maybe we don't want to have him working here anymore. And that fear what I could feel that kind of creeping in imeet. Do I say that? Did I ask the challenging question? Because I think it could be better for everybody or do. I stay quiet? And I decided in my own company that I could do that, and if it turned out, we're working together, and the questions I was asking where you wanted to go, then we were just part and it's okay, I'm not here to impose anything on you. We're working together as partners, we kind of bolt on for however, long we'd like, and then we separate, and maybe we come back together for another engagement. So that really informed, that sort of partnership and bringing out the best in you. And me was why I built a company because I frankly, I didn't see a lot of companies that did that because like yeah, that's not the normal way. And yet I see it as so. Powerful and I wouldn't want to live any other way and so why would you want to live up to the rigor of being B? Corp certified.

28:36 I'm curious, that's awesome and I love it, you know? And I see these announcements and they like pray, we got B Corp certification. So I'm going to sound like I'm patting ourselves on the back as well. See it's B Corp thing. That sounds really cool. I looked in it's like yeah we should apply. I think it took us six months because we were doing all this stuff already. It actually pushed me over the edge to. This is one thing that did make a difference, they were like, yeah, you need to really be thinking about how you're helping people medically, and I was like, we are not giving out there. Not providing benefits so people can be focused on the work and not on their health, not that they wouldn't, you know, if it was ill health, right? Like they were really worried about that and I was hurting them rather than how do we help them keep healthy. What benefits do we need to provide? Because that's just what we should be doing. And so I think we change to a credit union versus a bank. We upped the way we did our medical work, we had to put the statements about, we're anti-slavery and things like that.

29:20 And so the rigor I'm hearing rigor, it wasn't much rigor because we were doing virtually all those things anyway because I believed it was the right thing to do and so it was wonderful to have That helped us take it up a notch and then also sort of put us in touch with a community people that were. We were doing that even if it was maybe a farther leap. Then we had to initially amazing. Now, you also wrote a book called Ripple, a field manual for leadership that works. Can you tell us what that's about? Sure. It's pretty exciting, although it's kind of amazing, I thought it would take six months because I had all these articles and things, I'd written in blog posts, only causes bring this together and it'll just be great and it took six years. So I got the six, right? I started writing it because I saw people applying really cool. I mean, I've got so many leadership books. You wouldn't.

30:03 It's just crazy. You know, like 20 linear feet of them, probably, maybe more and they'd apply technique from this book or this strategy or things like that. They weren't in synchronicity, they were fighting each other because they have different philosophies management. And so I said, I think I'd like to put something in. It doesn't have to be the book but a book where people can see how, and I described it actually. The first part is about the leader knowing themselves and how they show up another path. That's Ripple one Ripple to is. Is, how am I trusting in enabling and equipping other people? That's Ripple to. So that's interaction and ripple, three is the organization itself. How do we, you know, get clearer and where we're going? And make sure the things work, right? And produce things efficiently. So, that's the book. And I had all these little pieces that I had learned from other people, if you have developed myself and put them in the book, and I just wanted to give people something, that was had a guy one time.

30:51 You told me, he said, you know, I was reading the book and it felt like we were sitting across the kitchen table. Having a conversation, and you're asking some questions and then you offer to The things I could try out to see what I could do better and I was like, that's exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be a with book before that I read this post and I wanted to be something that people could feel like. Yeah, I can do that, I can do that. And by working those areas where they might have some opportunity to be stronger as a leader, they could actually make the whole organization better. So actually in the back of the book is really fun. It says yeah, this is nice, but I need help now and so because it's organized and all these pieces and there's little like there's a principle like look for diamonds in the dirt, you know, that's a lead. I can see. See, I can see excellence in somebody, they can't see themselves because that's normal to that. If I don't call it out, they don't know it and we can't use it.

31:35 So, you know, and here's ways to think about the people and, you know, whatever it was. So it's a little tiny five-minute exercised around this one principal and those are the kind of things I have in there, but at the end of the book it says, hey my people are not really making the impact. They want, we're not making the results and I find a lot of backtracking. You might want to look at diamonds in the dirt for yourself and your team and then it refers you back to that section. So you sort of like a self-help diagnostic to figure out where could I be better? And so Yeah, I think we're almost out of the initial Printing and we do like online stuff, but it's pretty cool to have people come and say we're using this for our masters degree program effective, Business Leaders. And that's our curriculum. And we're just going through that and working all these exercises ourselves last super excited. Yeah, that's always wonderful to know that it's easy to catch on its mission accomplished for you.

32:20 As far as conversation across the kitchen table and it's something that people can actually put into practical use. Well done. Yeah, thanks. I did have three of our clients. Together. They conspired. And they called me and said, okay, this is nice and everything. We need a cohort based leadership program that runs for like six to nine months and we want to send all our people and I'm like well it's a do-it-yourself book. You don't you know of course we do coaching and they said well how about if we pre-fund it? How many slots can we buy ahead of time? And then you can take that money work with a curriculum designer. Make it happen. That was three years ago right before endemic. So we're in our third cohort, the Ripple leadership program where we do this with some coaching and things and mostly purpose-driven businesses virtually, all you know, there be Orbs and small Giants also, great game of business players, you know, these folks that are really trying to build leaders from the ground up and it's a blast, that's wonderful.

33:08 Oh my gosh. So then aside from your cohort, how can people get in touch with you? How can people learn more about trebuchet and working with your organization? Yes. Well, trebuchet. Group.com is probably the best place. We've got some really fun videos of clients and things on that site. It has a link to the rip leadership program. It has a link to some of our other things and basically it says, hey let's have a conversation. Action because there's no one-size-fits-all it's about the conversation of Discovery we can see, I don't know. What could we do? What's great look like and how might we partner, so that would be really wonderful and there's lots of tools and things on their people can just take in use and try to be better. I really encourage the B Corp Community to check it out and whatever things they'd like or questions they want to ask me even have a 20-minute no obligation whatsoever. Just ask a question and we'll just work through whatever we can do to discover things together and hopefully that helps people.

33:54 That sounds amazing. Chris Hutchinson, thank you so much for joining me today on Road. Role Models I really appreciate it. I'm sort of embarrassed to think of myself as a role model and I love that you're highlighting, people that can help other people make a difference in their lives. It's all about being an inspiration and spreading inspiration, so that people can be better at everything that they do. Thank you again, thank you so much.