Leading today is complex and challenging, but how has your leadership changed and adapted to the current environment?
In today’s episode, we interview Jim Bishop, who discusses with us how leadership today has changed and how to better organize, plan, and direct your team.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Success equation = Put purpose at the center of focus and then success tends to come naturally.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- You can visit our guest’s website at: https://conjunctionleadership.com/
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- If you are ready to franchise your business or take it to the next level: CLICK HERE.
- Follow our guest on social:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesdbishop/
- https://www.instagram.com/conjunctionleadership/
- https://www.facebook.com/conjunctionleadership
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
With over two decades of immersive experience in executive development, corporate leadership and human performance, Jim Bishop stands as a beacon of transformative leadership through his business, Conjunction Leadership. Jim’s journey has taken him across the globe, coaching executives, diverse teams and orchestrating the modernization of leadership systems for transforming business units. Having collaborated with industry giants like Eli Lilly, Roche, and Elanco, Jim recognized the pivotal role of a visionary leader willing to first work on themselves while revitalizing their culture. This catalyzed the birth of Conjunction Leadership in 2020, where Jim provides executive coaching and team development solutions. As a certified coach by the International Coaching Federation and a Certified Leadership Facilitator with Blanchard, Jim’s methods are a blend of science and art. He empowers executives.
through executive coaching, corporate culture consulting, and team effectiveness programs, focusing on holistic development within volatile contexts.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
If you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:14):
Leading today is complex and challenging, but how has your leadership changed and adapted to the current environment we’re all living in? In today’s episode, we interview Jim Bishop who discusses with us how leadership has changed today and how to better organize, plan, and direct your team as the team leader. Now with over two decades of experience in executive development, corporate leadership and human performance, Jim Bishop stands as a beacon of transformative leadership through his business Conjunction Leadership. Jim’s journey has taken him across the globe coaching executives, diverse teams, and orchestrating the modernization of leadership systems for business units. Having collaborated with industry giants like Eli Lilly, Roche and Elanco, he recognized the pivotal role of a visionary leader willing to first work on themselves while revitalizing their culture, and that’s what led him to start his company, Conjunction Leadership, in 2020 where he provides executive coaching and team development solutions. Now, Jim is a certified coach by the International Coaching Federation and a certified leadership facilitator with Blanchard. You’re going to love this interview with Jim, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (01:31):
Thanks for having me, Tom. So I’m Jim Bishop. I live just outside Indianapolis Indiana, and the name of my business is called Conjunction Leadership.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:39):
One of the things that we were talking about here, just as a way to get the conversation started, there was this concept of business transformation and it’s in a lot of business circles. We’re talking about transforming and making these transformations, and yet it seems like so many of those transformations don’t actually go as planned or maybe have no transformation. So why do you see things like this happen?
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (02:04):
Well, the way I’d describe it, Tom, is all change is necessarily personal change first, right? Transformation is just large scale change. We’re trying to move a business or a culture or a model into something that hasn’t existed before. And I’ve worked in many companies, had many clients and seen many things where maybe what is working isn’t working anymore and the business needs to “transform.” A lot of times they pay big dollars for big consultants to come in and say, “Here’s what transformation looks like,” and they’re really talking about changing the way the operating system or the internal mechanics of a business operates, right?
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (02:43):
So today the buzzword generally is somewhere around agile or more flexible or dispersed power, dispersed work teams. That tends to be the organizational model. That requires a large change of individual behaviors before that massive systemic change can occur. And I just have seen that all change is necessarily personal first. And in order for that massive transformation to take for effect and get the results, it requires a lot of individual people and leaders to pivot their brain to a more natural different way of working. My world, if we’re calling it an agile transformation, the way that we have to start with some of that is to become better humans ourselves and more nimble and adaptable personally.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (03:28):
I see a lot of times, as an example, a fixed mindset of a leader having grown up in a certain leadership style for a very long time, getting to an agile transformation, realizing that if we’re going to disperse power and give more autonomy to the work teams, that makes a leader very threatened sometimes because they may have grown up with the mindset that a leader organizes, plans, and controls and directs, but that’s truly power now given to the team. And if the leader has that paradigm that that’s their job, then they may not want that transformation to occur overtly or even subliminally, and it’s hard for them to disperse that power. So that’s at least my belief as it relates to how transformation sometimes succeed, but often fail.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:15):
That makes sense, where you have literally two different viewpoints, right? One, even the leader may be the person who executed or made the decision to bring in the “consultants” or these change management experts to help implement, but they themselves did not change, as a leader did not make any adjustment. That’s very interesting.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:35):
Well, that leads me kind of to this next thought of this difference between a good leader and those that are considered to be great. And so maybe, just off of our conversation, that good leader is someone who hires that consultant or brings a new staff or employees in to implement these change and yet is unable to get out of their own way to let their team do what they need to do to execute. So I’d love for you to talk a little bit more about this good leader versus a great leader idea.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (05:06):
Well, again, philosophy and belief. I think everything fundamentally changed maybe during the pandemic and some of us are still just recognizing and reconciling what that difference is. Good leadership in the past as defined through the quality management days and making the system around the way the system was operating, let’s think about it in a systems thinking perspective, right? So if the system was designed to produce widgets and gadgets and we could optimize and control that system for variation, then a good leader ran the system to get better optimal results. So planning, organizing, controlling, directing, those were leadership qualities that were needed in that kind of controlled system environment.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (05:50):
It was complicated of sense where the complicated environment, the pieces of the puzzle needed to fit together and we could learn each of the pieces, sales, manufacturing, marketing, whatever, but put it all together in terms of a business and optimize and control it. Yet the world shifted when the information started coming faster, when things were more volatile, when we were more uncertain about what next steps were and we’re just literally reacting to the moment. That made our system that we’re operating in a complex system. And I like to refer to that much more like an ecosystem approach, right? Where everything has to be in balance for the ecosystem to stay in harmony, so the right amount of sunlight and the right amount of plants and the right amount of wildlife. But if any of those get out of balance, what’s going to happen is one will over control another.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (06:39):
A leader in that environment managing a complex ecosystem has to be much more adaptable and sensing. They have to understand that they’re never going to be able to optimize or control it, but what they can do is try to sense and respond, but not with wild swings of the pendulum and five-year planning cycles. What they’ve got to do is sense and respond in the moment, and that’s best done in that environment where you have more of a dispersed work team where the power is at the front edges of the organization and the people who are actually at the front line are controlling a lot of the top line.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (07:10):
But here’s what a great leader is now. Instead of that planning, optimizing, controlling and planning, a great leader coaches, architects. They’re helping people set the structure but also being there to support and advise, but not necessarily there to tell people every day what to do. If they’re able to flip their brain, then that leader is able to provide more vision and clarity to where we’re headed less than trying to keep the day-to-day functioning as the system is designed to function.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:41):
One of the things you mentioned there is how leadership’s changed after the pandemic here. One thing that you noted in a pre-call here, pre-preparation for the interview is just how it’s particularly impacted male leaders. So I’d love for you just to talk about what these changes are and how that’s impacted men in this discussion.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (08:01):
Obviously being a man, it’s I have great empathy, because on one hand the presence of emotions and emotional leadership has become much more relevant in today’s world. So let’s again take ourselves back to that traumatic experience in 2020 when it wasn’t just the pandemic and it wasn’t just the threat of disease that some people that were setting things off. We had a fair degree of social unrest, we had a fair degree of political tension, we have a lot more understanding of what it means to be alone. And when we were working through the zoom structure of most of our businesses, what was happening is the feeling of disconnect was happening, right? Employees fundamentally returned from that experience with a different value expectation from their employer because no longer were we relating the same to our friends or our family or our co-workers. No longer were we worshipping in the places of our choice as we wanted to. No longer were we in the restaurants or bars or clubs or activities that we were participating in.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (08:59):
So the natural place that we were spending the majority of our time was with our work colleagues, yet very limited amounts of connection were occurring in that work situation. Now that’s the situation, but let’s think about how most leaders have been conditioned, particularly male leaders. A lot of times we’ve grown up with the mindset that if something hurts, you just rub dirt on it, never let them see you sweat, or emotions are actually a weak spot for most leaders. Most men have the ability to compartmentalize pretty strongly. And when faced with a challenge, we go into problem-solving mode right away. And in COVID days, keeping the business open and making sure that employees didn’t get laid off, those were big challenges, right? And so most men leaders were caught in a quandary because on one hand there are human living this existence, and in another one there are a business leader trying to keep the doors open. What I saw during that period of time was a lot of my male counterparts just putting their head down and focusing on the problem and stuffing a lot of the other things.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (10:00):
Fundamentally then when employees returned to the workplace and maybe a greater sense of normalcy started to come back, men did not acknowledge the fact that we needed to be better humans in the workplace. They weren’t able to name the emotions that they were experiencing, therefore they were lacking the empathy for some of the emotions that other people were experiencing. And when an employee feels the need for greater connection but feels that someone else doesn’t understand their emotions, what we’re doing is we’re naturally distancing between leader and employee.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (10:32):
And so it feels to me like a lot of leaders, especially male leaders, struggle during that period of time and are still grappling with the fact that, “Is it ever going to return to normal where I can just solve problems again, or do I always have to focus on some of these people things?” And it’s neither an either/or. I think it’s now an and/both always and forever will be because what employees expect in the workplace is that they can become better humans while they do great work. Not necessarily they become worse humans at the expense of doing great work. And that means they need to see the leadership modeled in the system so that they can do that themselves. So a large percentage of my time in my executive coaching conversations is to help the leader go first becoming the better human.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (11:18):
I want to go back to a comment that you’d made a bit ago about business being complex right now, that the workplace has evolved to being complex. So in order to be complex, that means it was at some point less complex. So can you talk through maybe some of that transition? You’ve been talking through some of that, but I think that might be helpful.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (11:37):
The discipline, if you will, is from systems thinking. So if we just start thinking about how systems evolve, we’re building widgets and gadgets. So it goes from a very simple system, tab A into slot B, build something. And then we need to add a few things to it and we add bells and whistles to it. So some more complicatedness comes into that system. So we might think of it more like assembling of a car engine. There are different components of that car engine. Each of them have different pieces, and a mechanic can learn and master how to work on the transmission. Someone learns how to work on the engine, and eventually we can put it all together, but each of those are controlled in its own way. We know if this goes out, then this needs to be replaced. And then the downstream effect of that. That is a complicated system.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (12:20):
A complex system is like that ecosystem that we mentioned. It never is completely controllable. There’s always some variable that has multiple downstream consequences that we can’t anticipate. So just a slight difference in day length or a slight difference in sunshine sets off a cascade of events. The ecosystem responds to that, right? It grows fewer plants or more plants as a result.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (12:44):
Our businesses in today’s environment, and now in business speak, we call that VUCA, volatile, uncertain, changing and ambiguous in this type of an environment where one CDC report sent downstream consequences that we couldn’t anticipate or didn’t understand, or in today’s world, the global economy with one economy and a local currency crashing and setting out downstream effects or a local war breaks out, or we’ve got conflict going in the Middle East, right? All of those things affect our business environment and not very many of them have ever been planned for or anticipated. So the ecosystem has to sense and respond that, and a leader has to be okay with that. That’s the different type of leadership where what used to happen in the complicated system was we would go away, we would do our strategic planning for five years in advance and we would lock ourselves into where we’re headed and we would work very diligently executing the plan for the next five years to get there. That’s how most leaders grew up believing this is what strong leadership looks like, is, “I achieved the plan.”
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (13:46):
But in today’s environment, five-year plans are almost irrelevant as soon as they’re written because something that we didn’t anticipate happens. And it throws a lot of leaders into kind of a confusion and chaos because what they learn to do isn’t working anymore and they have to learn a whole new way. And what that really looks like is understanding more about what’s happening at the frontline, engaging in more human to human connection, where the intelligence can be picked up a lot easier and a lot more free where information is shared as a neural network around the organization rather than as a hierarchy that passes through a one-way channel. Unless you’re intentional about building those kinds of connections, what’s going to happen is you’re going to be left behind as a leader because you’re managing a complicated system instead of the complex system.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (14:35):
That makes a lot of sense, taking into account all of these external factors, and certainly they’re going to have an impact, right? Whether we acknowledge it or not, it’s impacting the business, the consumer, the suppliers, all kinds of things. I remember when the situation with Ukraine and Russia happened, and I have a good friend that is in the food manufacturing business, and a lot of what they make is made with wheat and just how literally almost overnight it dramatically impacted his business. It was one of those moments where it was a realization that, even for me thinking, we truly are in a global economy, things impact us here that are occurring and vice versa around the world. So it was one of those light bulb moments for me that definitely changed perspective very quickly.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (15:26):
I mean, that’s a perfect example and how it can affect even the mechanics or the logistics of our business. On a more personal note, when the Palestinian-Middle East conflict broke out, there are people in our workplaces today that have polar opinions on what might be occurring, and yet we’re working together cooperatively on the same team and in the same organization. And if there’s not a leader who knows how to embrace that tension and allow it to occur to get to the productiveness of it, but they shy away from it, what’s going to happen is you’re just forcing division in your organizations and not allowing people to feel as if they’re a valued part of your organization.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (16:04):
Many leaders don’t know how to emotionally handle that because they feel like if I address it, it could get out of control. It could be a fire that rapidly spreads. Or it could show my ignorance or my bias on the situation itself. And it doesn’t have to do either of those things. What you need to do is be able to have that productive tension in the workplace that allows us all to feel valued, heard, welcomed and respected, and it allows us to be more human to one another in the workplace.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:31):
One of the things that you specialize in is helping coach and guide leaders at a midlife stage and going through business and growing. So how can someone, if they’re interested in learning a little bit more about what you’re doing or how they could get in touch with you, to learn more on this concept and some of the things you’re talking about here?
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (16:50):
Yeah, I have a huge amount of empathy for people at midlife. Oftentimes, leaders believe that it’s kind of a crisis they’re going through, but really it’s more of a transformation in their own being, they’re chrysalis if you’ll. I’ve authored an ebook, Mastering Midlife Leadership, and it includes nine power moves for leaders at this point in their journey and things that they can do or they can apply to their own leadership to help them pivot into a more graceful, joyful existence.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (17:15):
But let me maybe even describe why that’s important is, in midlife, a lot of things feel like they’re shifting. And it’s not often talked about, and it’s very, very not often normalized. And so a leader at midlife when a lot of things feel like they’re shifting will tend to go inward and withdraw and become more quiet instead of going outward and discussing it with other people.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (17:39):
Here’s some of the things that shift. Probably around the 37 to 52 year old mark, what happens is discretionary time becomes a lot more important. Probably someone has raised a family, working on a career very diligently, being asked to serve in their community, serving on a few philanthropic areas, and yet they’re feeling like a sense of obligation and duty is more of their calling than their purpose is. They know that there has to be more. They know that there has to be something else out there that makes them more fulfilled because they remember what it used to feel like to be fulfilled.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (18:18):
Early in life we tend to get fulfilled from our accomplishments, from our prowess, and from the things that we put our muscle behind to make happen. And at this point in our life, we are starting to also recognize I don’t have a lot more energy. I don’t have a lot more time and I don’t have a lot more muscle. Those things seem fleeting. And when there is a sense of loss in the equation, people tend to react to what they’re losing more than what they have to gain. And when they feel like they’re losing, they’re going to pull back and do more of what they’ve already done. So their tendency is, “I’m going to work harder. I’m going to put my muscle to it even more.” And yet they recognize their faculty is slipping a little bit and maybe they need more time for reflection or they would like to sleep a few more hours at night, or maybe they would even like to spend more time with their loved ones. So there’s a natural tension.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (19:05):
In this midlife pivot, what happens is we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done to get where we want to go, but yet that’s such an ingrained neural pathway. “I don’t know how to break out of it.” In the midlife, it really is a becoming. It’s more of a stepping into a more graceful and joyful existence and putting purpose in the center of your success equation rather than leaving it on the sidelines as something you’ll get to later in life potentially in retirement. And if we can step into that right now and help that leader grow through that experience, what they’re going to recognize, growth is synonymous with maturity. Oftentimes what we recognize is by the time we get to be physically grown, we think we don’t have the opportunity to grow anymore, but it’s the maturation of the soul and of the purpose and of your calling that really helps someone feel like they’re slipping into this space where they’re touching eternity even more.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:55):
So how can they get a copy of your ebook? Where do they go for that?
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (19:58):
You either go to LinkedIn and click on the top of the button. There’s a place there that says download. There’s also on the website, conjunctionleadership.com. There’s a place that says “You can click here and download the ebook” as well. So either of those. And if for some reason someone can’t find any other of them, just email me at jim@conjunctionleadership.com and we’ll get you signed up.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:19):
Well, Jim, this is a great time where we make a transition in the show and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (20:30):
Certainly. Everyone’s had a couple of misses. I also look at my misses as some of my greatest learning opportunities. But corporate America, 20 plus years, following the career track that everybody thought I should have and now that I even thought I wanted myself. We had three children at the time, adopted number four, found out we were expecting number five very quickly, and I’m sitting in a hotel room because I travel three weeks out of the month and realizing I’m missing some of the best blessings of my life. There was a point in time right there where I would consider it a miss because I was following this path that I thought I wanted and everybody said I should have. It seemed like the easiest path to success and the one that I was most in control of, and at the same time, I almost missed all of the blessings and joys of raising a family and being part of it and living their day-to-day existence.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:19):
Let’s talk about a make or two or a highlight you’d like to share.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (21:23):
I’d say stepping out of corporate America and stepping into my journey of entrepreneurship. Filled with a lot of fear and anxiety of course, facing a lot of the belief and mindset challenges that almost all entrepreneurs face. But after having been ingrained in corporate America for 20 plus years and learning how to manage that system, stepping into a place that’s not really manageable is that place of learning who you are all over again.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (21:47):
I think what I’ve learned is, and we may get into your next question, but my success equation, as long as I stand fully in the center of my power and my purpose, the success comes naturally behind it. When I put my success in front of that and I say, “This is what the definition is,” whether it be a number or a metric, and I chase that, I tend to lose my purpose and my commitment to myself in all of that. I stand outside of my power. So today it’s a lot more of the makes are coming from learning just how to… Once I get out of a coaching call with a client and I feel that center of purpose and center of power and just realize we’ve done some great work just in this 30-minute call. And then watching those people ignite fires all across their company and the things that they’re doing, there’s nothing more exhilarating in a feeling of that.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:37):
Wonderful. Well, let’s talk about a multiplier that you’ve used to grow yourself personally, professionally, or businesses you’ve been a part of.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (22:46):
I think the greatest power of multiplications is for me learning that networking was not a bad thing. What I mean by that is I would hate to go to those events that were just like networking functions. Everybody’s got their name tag and it’s like speed dating on steroids, right? You’re walking around shaking hands. I had this belief that it was all about self-promotion and politicking, if you will. But what I’ve recognized, especially in this journey of entrepreneurship, networking is just about telling other people your passion and telling other people where you’re at. It’s not sales. It’s not out there promoting and it’s not asking for business. It’s just, “Here’s what I do and here’s what I can do best, and here’s the place that I stand in and the space that I occupy on this planet.” When I tell people that, more times than not, the power of the network is the thing that has become the multiplier for me.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (23:38):
I think early in my journey, I always had ambitions to be an entrepreneur. And I was frustrated that my timing wasn’t matching with the timing that was actually materialized. But what I recognized was when I stepped out of corporate America four years ago, it was actually opportunity met timing and it was all right because by then I had developed enough organic people in my network that stepping out and telling people what I was most passionate about and what I was doing became very natural, and that became the biggest multiplier of my business. I mean, it led to a relationship that has been a long-time client. It’s led to another relationship that somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody has developed a long-time client, and that trust through the network has been transferred multiple times over.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:23):
The final question, Jim, that we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (24:29):
I fought long and hard about this when you sent it to me, Tom, and I alluded to this before. Success isn’t a number. It’s not a statistic, it’s not a metric, it’s a feeling. And to me it’s a feeling that a belief and a feeling where we’re all given just one chance to be here. And for whatever reason, our DNA was dropped on the planet at this point in time, and there is no one else’s DNA just like this. And so it really dawned on me one time that I was trying to become like everyone else, but I was trying to be average. In corporate America, there’s a bell curve and you always want to try and fit in and whatever that looks like. But when I learned that there were things that I could do and think about and it drove me crazy that nobody else was thinking about nearly as much as I was thinking about, and it would bother me, why weren’t they, when I learned to stand in that weirdness, I recognized that weirdness was my purpose and potentially even my calling.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (25:28):
When I stand in that, it’s a feeling of, I would almost even just say it’s like putting my finger in the pinpoint of eternity. I know that what I’m building is lasting because I can see it transforming other people and then they transform other systems or cultures or people themselves. And so it is that continuity between what I do and a sense that it happens in the future and it’s going to continue to happen in the future, whether that’s through my family or whether that’s through the clients that I’m blessed to serve. And as a result, the material rewards have just been there. Never once have I looked back and said, “I’m making less money than I made in corporate America. Why am I doing this?” But in corporate America, my focus was on the promotion. It was on the next level, it was on the next paycheck. In this world, it’s much more around what’s the next purpose that we get to serve or the next person that needs our help. And when I put it into that regard, it’s just much more natural, much more organic, and honestly much more satisfying.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (26:29):
Yeah, amazing. Thank you for sharing. Well, as we bring this to a close here, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to?
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (26:37):
I just hope that anyone listening to this that has that kind of feeling that, “How I’ve been working isn’t working for me anymore,” chooses to do something about it. I want people to recognize that work doesn’t have to suck. I think we’ve grown up with this… Well, a lot of people have grown up with a belief that if it’s not hard, it’s not worth it. And I’m not saying that work isn’t necessarily hard, but it doesn’t have to suck the life out of you. And what I see all too often is people who have that belief that it has to be hard and it has to suck, then work sucks the life out of them, and they don’t go home and serve their communities or their families or the places around them as much as they could.
Jim Bishop, Conjunction Leaderhship (27:21):
What I hope is that they realize that, “How I’m working isn’t working for me anymore. And though I may be physically tired at the end of the day, I can still be filled with joy if I’m doing something that’s in the center of my power and my purpose.” And when they feel that, what happens is they realize that their work actually is the training ground and the real opportunity to make a difference is in the communities and families and the people around them back at home. So my hope is that people will see their work as a way to actually help them become better human so that we can help other people become more human in their existence as well.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (27:58):
Jim, thank you so much for your time and sharing just a great conversation and discussion with us today. Let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when Jim talked about leadership is where you organize, plan, and direct. He said, “Well, are you organizing, planning and directing in more of a command and control style where one person’s calling the shots? Or is it more in a decentralized or democratized approach where your team is helping organize, plan and direct?”
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (28:33):
Takeaway number two is to understand what Jim described as the difference between a good leader and a great leader. And he talked about this concept of systems thinking, where a good leader helps to manage the system to perform its best, to organize, plan, and direct it. And he talked about how in today’s world we’ve gone from this system of an organization to a complex ecosystem where it’s very complex and it’s more of an ecosystem all intertwined where all the parts go together and he said, “A great leader must understand that they cannot manage and control, but rather need to understand that they need to keep it within a balance and that great leaders are coaches and architects and helping facilitate that.”
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (29:18):
Takeaway number three is when Jim shared in his multiplier that he learned that networking is not a bad thing. I know it’s something that a lot of people tend to struggle with this concept of networking. And for Jim, what he learned, and he said that networking is just telling other people your passion. I thought that was just brilliant. Networking is just telling other people your passion. So if you have any trepidation about networking or going to some of these networking events, I think that’s a great way to look at it.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (29:49):
And now it’s time for today’s win-win. So today’s win-win is when Jim shared his success equation where if you put purpose at the center of your focus and attention, then success tends to come naturally. However, when you put some version of a success metric, maybe income or merits or achievements of some kind in front of your purpose, he said that you tend to lose your purpose and are not getting the most out of life and getting the fulfillment that you can out of your work. I thought that was a great win-win. So keeping your focus on what that purpose is, what that calling is to drive, and then the success will come from that.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (30:40):
And so that’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone might be ready to franchise our business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
