My guest this week is Tony Mayo, The Business Owner’s Executive Coach.
Tony sums up his approach to helping his clients improve their management skills by saying he helps them, “Become easier to work for and easier to live with.”
Let’s face it, those are two things most of us could really use some help with!
In this conversation I ask Tony about the biggest mistakes he sees business owners making and how they can most quickly and easily fix those problems to improve their ability to attract and retain top-quality talent.
Connect with Tony: https://TonyMayo.com
What follows is a computer-generated transcription of our entire conversation. Please excuse any typos!
Frank Felker
My guest today is Tony Mayo. Tony’s a bestselling author, keynote speaker and the executive coach to business owners, Tony Mayo, welcome to the program.
Tony Mayo
Thanks, Frank, I appreciate being here.
Frank Felker
Tony helps business owners in a wide variety of industries create larger, more lucrative businesses in less time with less stress. And a big part of doing that is how he helps them gather together excellent teams of employees that can take care of the mundane stuff. So the business owner can focus on the important things like strategy or even things outside of their business.
So what Tony, and I want to talk about today is just that; managing how to become a better boss, how to become somebody that somebody else would like to work for. And we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, Tony, but I want to start with this.
What would you say is the biggest mistake that you’ve seen business owners make over the years relative to hiring and managing people?
Tony Mayo
Well, I would say it’s two sides of the same coin. Either they want employees to be just like them, but they’re not business owners, their employees. I mean, would you want a job with you on the other end yet. On the other hand, they expect them to be like machines, give them a clear instruction, they just run it perfectly every time. And that’s just not human. That’s not what you’re going to get. So you’ve got to treat people, like adult human beings. That’s the case. Now,
Frank Felker
when you say that, you shouldn’t expect employees to act like entrepreneurs or business owners, could you be a little more clear about what exactly does that mean? What is it that about them? That’s different?
Tony Mayo
Well, a form of this is why don’t they take more initiative? How come they’re taking responsibility? Why is he going the extra distance, bringing me ideas and that sort of thing. But that’s not what you generally want from your employees all the time. You want them to understand their particular field, and execute on it in a reliable way. It’s up to you to develop the strategy. In fact, if employees came to you with lots of new ideas and changes and innovations, it would wear you out, you don’t want that from everyone.
Frank Felker
I can see that everybody’s coming from every direction to Hey, boss, I got a great idea. What do you think about this, and, yeah, the expression you used would, it would wear you down after a while if you get too much of that.
Tony Mayo
Another form of that is people continually coming to you to get permission or to keep you in the loop, right. But often what they’re looking for is advanced absolution, they come to you. But they come to you in advance and tell you what they’re going to do, and you approve it, if you’re on the hook for how it goes. So they’re just trying to get you to take full responsibility on the repercussions. But that’s not the kind of people you want around you want people who will stand up for their own ideas and deal with the consequences.
Frank Felker
Interesting. So that’s sort of that advanced, or advanced absolutions kind of like asking for forgiveness at the end, instead of asking for permission at the beginning. The other way, advanced exploration is asking for permission. Now, you also said that they’re not robots, where you give them an instruction set, and you expect them to do it over and over again. Can you tell me more about what you mean by that? And what goes wrong? If I do expect that?
Tony Mayo
Hmm. Well, I was I had good fortune 1.1 as well into management of doing some volunteer work. So I showed off my allotted time. And the employee at the institution said, Okay, here’s what I’d like you to do. And it was something straightforward. Take this clipboard. Anyone on here that has a mark in this column, look up this and write on this other one, it was maybe 10 steps. And he ran through this once I walked back to my desk, I realized I had no idea what to do. Because the whole time I was in the boss’s office. I was thinking about looking attentive, being eager, polite, I didn’t have any instruction.
And I realized how often I do that to people too. I just run through it lickety split, as though I were writing code in a machine and expect them to get it. No, if they’re not asking questions, slowing things down. building some relationship to find out whether it’s a good time to give an instruction, it’s just not going to work. But most people won’t do what I did that day, which is to take that long humiliating walk from my desk back to his desk and say, You know what, I don’t know what to do, please run through that, again, don’t just make it up. Don’t wing it. Because that age isn’t getting the attention again.
Frank Felker
Interesting. So what would you recommend to your clients as the business owner or manager that they could do to help mitigate that?
Tony Mayo
Well, there’s a technique that I learned as a pilot. And you’ve probably all heard this in movies if you’ve never been in the cockpit, and it’s called the read back report back. So when air traffic control gives an instruction to a pilot to go to a different flight level, a different attitude, altitude, this, they’ll say, okay, United 354, cleared to heading 170 at flight level three, four, and the pilot says, This is united 347, proceeding to heading 170 at flight level three, four. And then when he gets there, he says, United 347 is that flight, level three, four on a heading of 170. So he got the instruction. He read it back. And then he reported when it was done.
Those three steps improve the quality of work immensely. When I started doing this with my employees, one of the best benefits is one wasn’t too proud of when the employee read back the instruction, I also realized it was not that good an instruction, I get a chance to modify before they went off and did the wrong thing or did it halfway. But also, that report back is so wonderful. To this day, my favorite email from my virtual assistant is four letters, d o n e. So I know that that task which I delegated is now complete, because there’s some part of my brain that’s thinking about, is that done? How did it go? Just getting that done? email goes a long way.
Frank Felker
So you’re saying that you actually have the employee repeat back to you verbatim as closely as they can? what you just told them? Now, does that? Is that a little bit awkward? Is the employees find that demeaning if the first time they’re doing it? Or how does that go over? How do you sort of sugarcoat that?
Tony Mayo
That’s a good point, Frank, thanks. I’m so accustomed to this, that I’ve forgotten about the sort of padding, you need to put around this kind of thing. And it’s my favorite one, which is I take responsibility for being less than perfect. Say, now, I’d appreciate it. If you just repeat back to me what you’re going to go do, because I’m not sure I gave you a really good instruction. I want to hear what I said to make sure that I conveyed it. Well.
Frank Felker
That’s great. Yeah,
Tony Mayo
I use that with contracts and written follow up. As soon as you say, Oh, we don’t need to formalize this in a contract and my responses, I’m sure that your integrity is as good as mine. I don’t think your memories any better than mine. Let’s write it down.
Frank Felker
That’s great. I like that very much. Now, do you have advice that you give to your coaching clients relative to recruiting and people as far as how they advertise and how they interview and that type of thing?
Tony Mayo
I do. We talked about that quite a bit. There are no other aspects to it. But first, I’ll tell you, if you don’t mind, I’ll give you a little anecdote. I have coaching groups where I get business owners together. And they will meet on a regular basis to get to know each other and they help each other with their business challenges. The first time I was setting one of these up, I got a great opportunity with a large regional accounting firm, we met near office had my prospects, their clients.
And one of the first topics to come up was recruiting, hiring and retention, straight very important stuff. Mm hmm. We talked about it for about an hour, which is the typical length of these group conversations. halfway into this, I’m noticing nobody’s jumping up and saying that’s brilliant. you’ve solved by problem. Nothing new. Don’t breakthroughs. I’m sweat. I’m saying I want to charge these people to come to this meeting. They’d better get something. Sure. Conversation concluded without any significant breakthrough advice.
When the meeting was over. More than one of the people came up to me and said, I want to join and of course, being a salesperson. I said, Well, tell me what it is that major decision, said, Well, it was that conversation about hiring and retention. What I found out is everybody has trouble with it. In nobody’s doing anything better than what I’m doing. So I can relax. I can stop looking for the magic bullet on that one. It’s just how They were doing the best practices in that room, there are some things that can make a difference if you’re not already doing them.
The most popular one these days is what sometimes called the behavioral interview. If you need someone to be able to do a particular task, you need someone who can work with pivot tables in Excel and put up beautiful reports in PowerPoint. Well, you ask them about times they’ve done that not? Can you do this? That’s a yes or no, no, I want to hear about a particular pivot table that you’re proud of. Tell me about another one. And another one, you want to ask for two or three specific examples. It’s just too easy. Say that you know how to do something without getting details? No, that’s a behavior to find out from them specifics about the time they exhibited the behavior that you want classic questions or things like, tell me about a particularly difficult customer complaint that you resolve amiably, or whatever it is the skill you need for that job.
Frank Felker
What about ideas that you may share with your clients about retaining people for the longer term? particularly well, especially people who are good? You know, of course, we were hopeful that either the people who aren’t so good are going to find their way own way out the door, we’re gonna have to give them a nudge. But how about retention? You know, these days, because unemployment is so high, and everything that’s going on with the COVID and everything else, I’m sure people who find a job are more likely to stick with it. But we’re not going to be in this situation forever. And just 12 months ago, we were at record low unemployment. What sort of things can business owners do to help retain quality people?
Tony Mayo
Right, in the best people are the hardest to retain our set? Sure. Well, let’s deal with both parts of that issue with one good practice. And that is the retention as well as moving out the lower performers grades, have a culture of accountability. Now, you got to be careful about this, I have found that when I’m doing a corporate strategy retreat, or an executive committee meeting, someone will often say we need more accountability in this organization. But what they really mean is we need more punishment. That’s, that’s not what I mean by accountability.
What I mean is, like an accountant has accountability. If you ask your accountant or your controller, the amount of cash we have on hand, whether you can cover payroll next week, they’re going to give you the answer. Now, it’s not their job to you have enough money, they just give you an accounting of it. And that’s what I want for every job in your organization, for them to be able to tell you exactly where it stands all the time. And if that’s different from what you’ve instructed them to do, what the business requires what they’ve agreed to do. Don’t push it under the rug, make it clear that this is what was news. That is what we got. What are you going to do about that? to people who are good, love this? Because they know they are meeting the standard. But people who are no good? Very quickly leave.
I can’t tell you how many brothers in law, long term employees, folks who just retired and placed the rip employees who just hiding out because invented for 25 years, and nobody wants to fire them. If you start telling those people every day or two, this is what you said you would do. I didn’t get it now what they leave. Nobody wants to be reminded to not hitting the mark the time after time. They
Frank Felker
don’t want to keep having that conversation with you.
Tony Mayo
Right. Right. I’m not punishing them. I’m not demeaning them. I’m saying this was the promise. Here’s the reality. Now what the good people say I’ll fix it. The bad ones say sayonara.
Frank Felker
He brought something up there. That is really a very ticklish point, which has to do with family businesses. You mentioned the brother in law, but it’s not always in laws. It can be you know, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, etc. What about the particular dynamics of an outsider working within a family business? Have you ever had to counsel one of your clients to say, Hey,
Frank Felker
you know, this guy is only one of three people who’s not a family member in this company. And you need to do something. I don’t know what treat them differently or, or do something. Have you ever come across a situation like that where family dynamics play into management?
Tony Mayo
Oh, yeah, definitely. And that’s one of the things where it’s actually an easier part of my job, because I’m often the only one that can tell the truth about this. They expect me to be an outsider who’s not concerned about the family dynamics. Well, I’m concerned but I’m not constrained by them. I can have some very frank conversations about that with the family members as well as with the boss. I had significant shareholders pushed out. And it didn’t cause any long term rancor. Because again, we’re dealing with this is what’s needed. Here’s what’s going on. What do we do?
Frank Felker
You know, I have a long standing sort of pat statement that I say that business relationships have to be different than personal relationships. Because as you know, that guy means business, or that lady is serious business. And it just comes down to you have to do and say things in business in order to stay alive in business, that you might be able to dodge in personal relationships. Is this an address a topic that you address? I know, you just spoke of it a moment ago that, you know, this uncle Joe’s got to go even though he owns 30% of the company, because he’s just not getting it done. But is that anything you ever have to counsel people about his Look, this is something that has to be said, that you wouldn’t say at the Thanksgiving table. But you got to say at the board table?
Tony Mayo
Absolutely. In role playing those conversations is maybe the largest single use of time, when I’m coaching a client one to one. In fact, it’s one of the things that sold me on video conferencing, instead of just telephone coaching. years ago, I was on Skype, or maybe your predecessor with a client, she had a difficult conversation, in her case with a superior. And we roleplay that she said exactly what we had designed together. And as soon as she finished the roleplay, I saw this. Okay, I guess you’re not really sold on this approach. Let’s work on it more so video at definitely as a wider communication channel. But what it comes down to in these conversations, I operate one of my operating principles in life, as well as as a coach is there’s a way to say anything to anybody, in a way that works for everybody. Now, that’s a tall order.
But think about it. What how would your life be? If you really could express anything to anybody in a way that works for everybody? You get so much off your chest, you’d be so much clearer about what they have to say what matters to them. Believe me, it makes life a lot smoother, more fun and more productive. The question is, how do you do it? Yeah, well, there are a lot of there are a lot of particulars and circumstances. But it comes down to this is an adult to adult conversation. Now, that may seem like a meaningless phrase, but it’s based on a book you’ve probably heard of, if you’re if you’re old enough, it’s called I’m okay. You’re okay. It’s really solid, self help psychology books written by a breakthrough psychologist. And the idea he points out in this is that when we communicate with each other, we’re often vying for position for priority for strength.
And one way to introduce the idea is to think about the first word humans understand I’m not the first one they can say. But the first word when the parent usually says it to the child, they get it. No. It’s no. We teach them No, because we want to protect them, right? We need to protect them from certain things. In fact, one of my children, I won’t say which of the three, I was hyper, stood up on the changing table and started to urinate. I said, No, no, he stopped. Wow. Not only did he know the word he can control thing. But what does this do to us as humans? The first thing we learn in language, which is where live most of our lives, is, there’s something wrong. It’s me. And the person who knows what’s wrong, it’s the most important person in the world. A good relationship with a parent is life and death at that age. Sure. That insight of what it means to be human is deep.
And as a foundation element of all of us almost all the time. Something’s wrong. It’s me, and the person who points out that it’s wrong is really important. interest. So what happens? It’s so easy as a boss, to reenact that parent child interaction. When we criticize employees, tell them what they’re doing wrong. Tell them where to sit, when to stand when they can eat lunch. We’re being parental, and that can put them into a child mode, where they’re irresponsible. They They’re emotional. They’re resistant. Yep. kids know the parents have power, but they know how to get around it, right? We’re being teenagers. Mm, is when you start this critical parental behavior, you downgrade employees, it’s a child’s like behavior.
What’s the way out adult to adult, treat your employees like people who have skills, they have integrity, they can listen, they can talk, they can be creative. And that eye level conversations, a lot of work can get done in a compressed amount of time. That’s the litmus test is, if you’re telling someone what’s wrong with them, you’re on the wrong path. Now, sometimes people turn in work that isn’t good, or they do things that isn’t acceptable. That’s where my another sort of aphoristic model comes in. Tough on the task, easy on the people. Not you did this wrong, this report seems to have an error in it. Let’s take a look.
Frank Felker
It’s great. I like that. I also like your reference to the parent child, because I think sometimes by default, managers, people thrust into management, business owners thrust into management, who have no training, and no successful experience and no role models to follow. The only role model they do have to follow is that parent child relationship. And they seem to fall into that and they start yelling and threatening and doing all kinds of terrible things. And I’m glad that you brought that up. Because, for me, I was very young when I first started managing people in my family’s business. And I was just awful at it. And as I make no bones about that was terrible. And but I’ve learned over the years to be better.
And not until you just said that, that I realized that even though I was barely 20, myself, I was trying to assume the role of the patriarch, and telling people where they’re going wrong, and what they’re going to do next, and all that kind of thing. So that’s good advice. I don’t want to go any further down that rabbit hole, though, I’m afraid because we’re really eating up the time. And there are a couple of other things I want to talk about. I want to ask you about this whole idea of accountability in a group setting. When you and I first met, it was 20, some odd years ago was the late 90s. Somewhere right around the year 2000 2001. When we were members of a group that was called the executive committee, tech teec. It’s now called is it pronounced Vistage or Vista?
Tony Mayo
Yes. In this country, okay.
Frank Felker
And so we were a group of about 10, or 12, CEOs, who I used to refer to it as group therapy for CEOs who would get together once a month, and then we would meet with the chair of our group, the leader of the group, individually, once a month. And there was a lot of value to that. And I want to let you speak to it. But first, I got to give you a little pat on the back for some accountability you laid on me. In one of our meetings that I’ll never forget, I had just come back from making an investor presentation to a guy who was managing $125 million worth of funds. And I was asking him for $5 million.
And he said $5 million, nah, how about if I give you $15 million? Can you take this concept nationwide, the next 180 days with $15 million? And I said, certainly not. And he goes, Well, I guess we have nothing left to talk about then showed me the door. And when you heard me tell that story, you said, Well, I think you’re playing in the wrong sandbox. The guy would have been in the right guy in that sandbox would have said, dang, right, I can do it, where it would sign the check. Boy, I’m ready to go. And, you know, and then we’ll see what happens later. I the way I put it is it’s like, you know, trying to sneak a kiss in on a girl. You know, when you’re a teenager, just tell her anything, you know, just get the kiss. I could have told that guy anything gotten the check, but I just didn’t want to.
Tony Mayo
So I don’t tell advice.
Frank Felker
Oh, yeah, that’s exactly what Tony told me. But anyway, I never forgot that, obviously, because it was 20 years ago. So you do this type of thing, group meetings and this kind of thing. Speak to the services that you offer to business owners, and what sort of value they might get from it.
Tony Mayo
Well, you summed it up very nicely with that credo that you gave in the beginning. It’s all about having them run a larger and more lucrative business but with less stress, taking less time. In fact, the way they do it is I like to say by becoming a better to work for and easier to live with some of the best. Thank you. I get from the spouses who find it. Easier to get along with you less parental at home. How about that? Yeah. In more collaborative, you more available, that’s the biggest thing. And they just have more time. Because you know what, and I can’t take credit for this. It was one of the speakers we heard when we were together.
And that tech group, who said, one of the reasons business owners are so busy, is a lot of what they do is just created more for them to do, hmm, it doesn’t really matter for the business. So distinguishing those things, goes a long way. So I always tell people, I’m working with the whole person, when you’re an entrepreneur, your life is one thing. It’s not like you can do one thing at the office to something else at home. And they find that once they get the business running better, their personalized friend better and they have more time for them.
Frank Felker
You know, one of the big benefits I got from Tony, and I’m sure your clients do as well, is I needed somebody to talk to about this. I couldn’t talk to my wife about it, who am I going to talk to you about it, nobody wants to hear it. And nobody really understands what the person at the top of that pyramid goes through. And they don’t want to hear it. Certainly your employees don’t want to hear about it. Your shareholders don’t want to hear about it. And so just having the opportunity to vent and get things off your chest, and then get some wise feedback and so forth is a is a huge help. I’m sure you would agree.
Tony Mayo
Absolutely. And I hear it all the time. Maybe the most common thing I hear from clients is, I’m sorry, I just have to vent to somebody said, yeah, that’s part of the deal. Say it the way you say it to yourself don’t know editing. But the other thing is that here, I guess I’ve heard from every client at least once, which is, I’ve never told anyone this. But feel this, you can see their shoulders go up. And they can breathe more deeply to get that secret off of them that they were embarrassed about or didn’t know how to handle or weren’t sure how to roll out. Just feel to have another person whom you respect, hear this thing that concerns you. And they still respect you. That’s a big part of what I do as well. And as you said, Give them some feedback, which is usually not what to do, or an answer. Sometimes I have an answer. I mean, I’ve been in business for 40 some years. But more often, it’s helping them understand their well. Here’s my favorite endorsement I got from a client. She said, with Tony, I do my own best thinking, that’s where I’m going.
Frank Felker
I like that.
Tony Mayo
And this experience, I’m sure you’ve had Frank in with coaching and in the group you’re in, by the time you clearly state your concern to the group, you often know what to do. It’s something like getting it out of your head out on the table, step by step. It’s obvious what to do. Where’s in here? Not so much? No, one of things I say is I keep thinking I can solve these things in my head. But you know, there’s not enough room in there. And it’s way too dark.
Frank Felker
And it’s messy. It’s disorganized. There
Tony Mayo
is some innocent scary stuff in there. Yeah. So yeah, getting it out with a with a coach, a patient person with some experience with me respect. It’s a powerful thing.
Frank Felker
I want to wrap up with this, Tony. A lot of people, you know, our age, had been running their business for decades. And now whether they like it or not, the time is coming, when they really need to start thinking about what they’re going to do next. And I’ve done a number of interviews with people about this about business owners avoiding even thinking about selling their business or retirement or what have you. Because their identity is so tied to that business and to being the owner of the business and the manager that business. What sort of advice do you offer to your clients in terms of trying to put a wedge between their personal identity and their business identity?
Tony Mayo
Oh, that’s not where I thought you were going with that series about preparing to sail, but I’ll go with where you ended up? The answer I’d give is don’t try be one person everywhere. Now, when people talk to you about what about work life balance, I picture one of these old fashioned balance scales with the scales on each side. Mm hmm. are putting their kids in their family and their church are volunteers in this side, in the money and the fame and so on the other side. But that’s not the way you are. You’re one thing, you can’t split it up and balance it out. So get clear about who you are, what your values are, and then express them in ways that are appropriate to your different environments. It’s an integrated, full person approach. It’s not always obvious how to do that. But when we dig into it for a while, people start to realize that they can be the same person with the same techniques at home, at the office, in their other interests.
Frank Felker
That’s a very interesting perspective.
Tony Mayo
will tell you we don’t want to we want to integrate it.
Frank Felker
Got it. I see it. That’s an excellent illustration that sticks in the mind. If somebody has been watching or listening to our conversation today and wanted to reach out to you and find out more about what you might be able to do for them, what’s the best way for them to connect?
Tony Mayo
Why I suggest they started my website. It’s Tony mayo.com to NY and they got a new I o.com contact form on there. As well as a lot of material. I have 500 articles, some Excel templates and other tools that you can use. So I would start with that, and it’s still of interest, hey, fill out the contact form. And we’ll find out if I can work with you. If you’re that is if you’re an owner who operates as an established business, not a startup, but something that has employees and probably a team of managers. That’s where my sweet spot is.
Frank Felker
Tony Mayo, thank you so much for joining me today.
Tony Mayo
It’s been a blast. Good to be here.
