INTRODUCTION

I grew up in a leadership family. My dad was the pastor of what was then the largest church in Canada. At the same time, he founded a charter school that now has 1,200 students attending. My mom had a huge heart and ran programs for large numbers of mentally challenged individuals. Her greatest tribute was to be regularly visited by a man with Down syndrome, who rode his bike across town to see her while she was on her deathbed. Like the vast majority of church leaders the world over, they made little money, served wholeheartedly, and entertained no hint of scandal.

In their spare time (!) my parents planted churches in towns around ours, and that’s where my siblings and I came in. We were expected to be leaders. So from an early age, I taught classes of kids, worked as a camp counselor and a youth group leader, and (to my great chagrin) even stepped up with a musical selection from time to time. My earliest memories focus on working with and for people.

After college (where I worked as a resident director and as a leader in many volunteer roles), I started my career as a youth pastor, working with teenagers, volunteer staff, and parents in a very fast-growing church. In an effort to cope with all of the issues attendant to growth, we spent a lot of time touring the world, interviewing and learning from the best leaders and motivators of volunteers on the planet. These are exceptionally gifted people. It’s one thing to lead people who are paid to follow you, and quite another to lead volunteers who don’t receive a paycheck from you and could just as easily stay at home.

I learned from many of the key leaders in the church world at that time. In Seoul, Korea, I toured the largest church in the world (Yoido Full Gospel Church, then at about 700,000 members), and later had an opportunity to speak with the lead pastor, who gave leadership to more than 500 pastors and tens of thousands of volunteers. This was a mind-expanding learning experience for me, as I spent the majority of my work time recruiting volunteer leaders, and devising new strategies to train, engage, and deploy them.

Then I moved into the business world, working for a mid-market company that operated on a global scale. There, I was amazed to find that leadership didn’t spend much time (or even any time at all) on issues like employee engagement, organizational health, and attracting and retaining star people.

The practice then was to run ads and hire people to fill a spot, and then forget about them until they quit or caused trouble that required intervention by management. I was shocked. I always assumed that the business world had this issue dialed, but I found to my amazement that this non-strategy around people was pretty much normal; we weren’t unique. Our suppliers and customers ran their businesses in pretty much the same way. To me, this seemed like madness, a tremendous waste of money and talent. In my previous life, I had seen what engaged, trained people were capable of doing.

After spending seven years in the trenches putting some of my employee engagement ideas into practice, I realized that my true passion was to work with business leaders to find ways to win on the “people” side of the business. In 2003, I went out on my own and have never looked back. I care deeply about these issues.

Today, I help leaders navigate the challenges associated with growth, and most of these challenges are rooted in people issues. As complicated as they seem, these issues can be fixed. Imagine: no more working with people who you wouldn’t rehire if you could do it all over again. No more going home to talk over people issues with your spouse. No more stressing out during the day, wondering if delegated jobs are getting done right. In short, no more grappling with chronic, nagging people issues.

I’ve worked in many businesses across multiple industries in which, when we’re done, the business has every key seat filled with true A-level players, or “stars.” A star is simply someone who “gets it.” Stars share the attitudes that are important to you, and are committed to getting a lot done. A star is typically three times more productive than an “okay” person.

A non-star in a key seat costs the business between two and 15 times their annual salary, depending on the role. Do the math: Fixing this problem is paramount. Learning to assemble and deploy a team comprised of the right players is the most important skill you can develop in business.

There’s a lot of talk and ink poured out today about how to build a great culture, but I believe that it isn’t a complicated equation. Simply put:

A great culture insists that every person on the team play as a star.

A poor culture tolerates chronic underperformance.

I help implement tools that enhance communication, and focus and engage employees. We live in a new era in which employees aren’t content to show up and shut off their brains. Putting all of your effort into coaching the right people, and getting them singing from the same song sheet, saves you money and makes you money too. This book gives you the road map to permanently solve your people problems.

I already know something about you, too: if you’re reading this book, you’re trying to figure out how to get better at handling people issues. I’ve written this book for:

• Business owners and managers. If you’re the onsite manager of either the mother ship or a branch office, getting the people part of the business right is your biggest challenge and the biggest indicator of whether you’ll succeed or fail.

• Regional managers working with multi-site businesses. If you’re on the road working with several business units—whether the units are corporately owned or part of a franchise—this book is for you. You must be able to advise and coach your managers on how to handle their biggest stress: how to handle their people issues.

• Young leaders being asked to step up into a new role. The thing that will make or break you in your new role is your ability to win the confidence of your players and then see each of them achieve their potential. Far and away, the most important skill for you to develop is the ability to attract, retain, and develop star players.

• Board members. If you’ve been asked to sit on the board of any organization, the main issue that you’ll have in front of you is people. This book is written to educate you on how to get much, much better at the skill of evaluating and working with them.

• Not-for-profit leaders. Whether you’re leading an NGO, a government office, a church, or an academic institution, many of your issues are the same as those of every business. Whenever you get a group of people together trying to accomplish something, you run into the same set of challenges. You’re not immune just because you’re trying to change the world.

A Word About the Format

To save you time, each chapter ends with a chapter summary and people action steps that you can immediately implement.

Though the case studies and stories are true, names and identifying details have been changed.