The Heart of Business
"The Heart of Business" podcast, hosted by Mo Fathelbab, is an authentic and insightful exploration of the human side of leadership and professional growth. Through candid conversations with accomplished business leaders, thought leaders, and peer group facilitators, Mo will delve deep into the personal journeys, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped their careers. Mo Fathelbab's skillful and empathetic approach creates a safe space for guests to share their truths and vulnerabilities, revealing the emotional and often unseen dimensions of success in the corporate world. Each episode offers listeners a chance to glean practical wisdom, heartfelt advice, and a profound understanding of the intricate interplay between leadership, authenticity, and personal growth.
The "Heart of Business" is the official podcast of International Facilitators Organization, LLC and hosted by IFO's founder and CEO, Mo Fathelbab. To learn more, please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com.
The Heart of Business
How Peer Groups Transform Leadership: A Conversation with Leo Bottary
Unlock the transformative power of peer groups in leadership development with Leo Bottary in our latest episode. Explore how collaborative environments foster growth, curiosity, and psychological safety, providing leaders with the support they crave amidst today’s fast-paced challenges. Leo shares his journey into peer facilitation, highlighting the invaluable lessons he learned at Seton Hall University.
Throughout the conversation, we address how peer groups help leaders gain fresh perspectives, solve core issues, and create deeper connections with fellow executives—all crucial elements for effective decision-making and strategy formulation. The power of peer learning becomes evident as Leo recounts success stories that demonstrate tangible benefits for organizations that embrace this collaborative approach.
We invite you to consider how implementing peer groups in your workplace can enhance team dynamics and individual performance. Join us for this insightful exploration, and don’t miss the opportunity to reflect on your own experiences with collaboration—what lessons have you learned from your peer connections?
Please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com to learn more about Mo Fathelbab and International Facilitators Organization (IFO), a leading provider of facilitators and related group facilitation services, providing training, certification, marketing services, education, and community for peer group facilitators at all stages of their career.
Welcome to the Heart of Business podcast sponsored by International Facilitators Organization. I'm your host, mo Fatalbab, and today our guest is Leo Batari. Leo has been a friend for years. He is a fellow fan and advocate for peer groups globally. He has had experience not only launching and working with many Vistage peer group, amongst others, but also training many of the Vistage facilitators, otherwise known as the Vistage chairs. So Leo and I have a very shared passion that comes from very different places and so, leo, welcome to the show. It is an honor to have you with us today.
Speaker 2:Well, it is so great to be here. I always love our conversations and I think it's so much fun when we share the fact that we're kind of comes rooted from some different places in many respects but you know all very shared passion and always a great idea exchange.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so, leo. I want to know, first and foremost, how did you get into this business?
Speaker 2:You know, for me it really happened. I'd have to trace it to my master's program at Seton Hall University. So I graduated college in 1983. I went back to graduate school in 2006. College in 1983. I went back to graduate school in 2006. So 23 years difference, right?
Speaker 2:So if you think about it, when I was in college, education was a very individual pursuit. It was kind of a solo thing. You'd sit, you'd take notes from the professor and you'd shield your paper from other people when you're taking quizzes and things like that. You do all that. So next thing, you know, I'm in a learning team at Seton Hall University, where collaborative learning, basically, would have been called cheating back in 1983. So here we are all working together and, the interesting part though, we were all senior to mid-level executives from all kinds of different companies around the world, and we came together and we made each other better, and I thought it was an extraordinary program and we learned more from one another than we ever did from the material or the professors, and that was by design.
Speaker 2:And so in 2010, when Vistage was looking to kind of get back on the national media stage after kind of dealing with the financial crisis of 2008, now, all of a sudden I'm at Vistage and people got this because I experienced it in a very big way in graduate school. And one of the things I also did which was super helpful at Vistage is I was heading up corporate communications and brand communications there. But I said to the CEO I can't do this job from San Diego, so get the travel budget going because I need to be in the field you know really doing and being where all the great work is being done. And that was a tremendous education, as you might imagine. So once I had gotten into that and once I was at Vistage for six and a half years or so and I led a brand refresh for the company and basically a big part of that brand refresh for the company and basically a big part of that brand refresh was going around and talking to CEOs and business leaders all over and asking them like how do you learn, how do you grow, how do you bring new thinking into your companies? And they would say things to me like well, I read books, I have a coach, I hire consultants, I go to events and conferences, I watch TED Talks, I go to executive development programs at places like Harvard and Stanford.
Speaker 2:No one and I mean zero responded with this idea of being in a peer group. It wasn't even in their consideration set. So it was amazing to me because I basically went to the board and I said I don't know how long we're going to be happy keeping this a great kept secret Because, as I see it, we're trying to sell a Mercedes to someone who doesn't even know what a car is. As I see it, we're trying to sell a Mercedes to someone who doesn't even know what a car is. So that's where the idea for the first book and clearly it wasn't as if there was nothing out there. But by comparison, when you look at, if you go to Amazon and you'll pop in leadership under books, there's 60,000 titles, and when you start looking at peers, there wasn't a whole lot out there at all.
Speaker 2:So back in 2016, the idea was to not write some kind of hardcover brochure about Vistage, but to really spend time with the Scott Bordells at the time, the Vern Harnishes, the people who represented different ways of approaching this, who led these organizations who, you know again, assembled and facilitated groups all over the world to see how they do what they do so well and how incredibly beneficial it can be to CEOs and business leaders.
Speaker 2:And once that first book was done and I ended up building some workshops and programs around some of the original models and frameworks that were created from that, then it was like I just I loved it, and so all the work I do now I do a lot of work with peer groups is again, there's Vistage groups, but there's certainly many other types of groups as well but then also how to take what these high performing peer groups have been doing so brilliantly for so long and how to bring those principles into companies to help their teams run more effectively. That, you know again, is that's where it's just so much fun. I've never enjoyed anything more in my career than doing right now.
Speaker 1:I love all that and you know I'm reminded that before I knew what peer groups were, a very important turning point in my education was when I started studying with a group of friends and helped each other figure out answers that we didn't understand. We heard things, you know, through another voice and that was one of the very main factors that took me from a C student to an A student, and you know it's interesting that you've helped me connect that dot. So, leo, I love your story. Again, you know I feel like I'm speaking to my brother here. What about those peer groups is most meaningful to you as a practitioner, as a creator?
Speaker 2:I love watching and just really experiencing the generosity that these peer group members have with one another. It's really extraordinary. You know, whether it's with groups or there's a, there's another, there's a company that I lead virtual peer groups for, for example, and they're plant managers all over the country and we set them up in regions and I use the Circles platform in order to facilitate those sessions. But, right out of the gate, Great friends of ours, of course. Oh, Dan Hoffman, you know great great people.
Speaker 2:You know, and the best conversation platform out there hands down. You know. I just think there's so many great tools with it and all that, so we'll give a little plug to Circles and Dan here as well. But I was really struck early on by these plant managers.
Speaker 2:Other than an email address or some name on a list of other plant managers, they didn't know each other like at all. They work in very remote areas in the country so they didn't really feel that connection, you know, other than to ask the boss for something they didn't know when to talk to about their job or what they did or what the emotional aspects of that are, the technical aspects of it, every aspect of you know what they do and to put them together, even in a virtual setting, and watch how just unbelievably giving they were and that, how that giving just modeled and just continued to escalate and was so extraordinary, and when you see the benefits of that, when you really watch that in its full splendor and watch people who are all in that regard. To me that is one of the more exciting things about being involved in these groups, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know it's like a no brainer. We're plant managers, we have the same job, we work in different parts of the country or the world and oh, we haven't gotten together to compare best practices and share ideas. It just makes no sense to not do that. Do you see much resistance? Or in what way do you see resistance from organizations that don't get this process, that don't understand the benefit?
Speaker 2:I don't know that I see resistance so much as I think that people want. You know, everybody wants the silver bullet, Everybody wants the little you know, click this, make this happen. You know, and, as you know, that isn't quite how that works all the time. So I think sometimes is they don't quite get what the real benefit is, or why they aren't set up in their organization now, you know, to get the benefit already. So, for example, when we talk about, you know, groups working alongside, teams like that doesn't make sense to a lot of people, because they're already a team, they're already together, already do their thing.
Speaker 2:The issue, though, is that teams aren't designed to help make the individual members better. The teams are designed to create a collective work product or any kind of shared, you know achievement that you could. It could be winning an NBA championship, it could be achieving some big, you know collective win for a new client or something of that nature, but you know they're just not designed to do that. Groups are designed to help the individuals. You know it's about the people in the room contributing to others. Certainly, that's where that generosity comes in, but when they get that back 8, 10, 12, 16-fold, however many happen to be in the group. Now, all of a sudden, they can become better individual team contributors. They have better relationships with the people there because now they know their backstory. Maybe they know their job better than they ever did prior to it. Right?
Speaker 2:How many times you go into a company and say to the marketing person hey, that finance director over there, what do you think they do all day? I don't know. They say no to me all the time. It's kind of the joking answer, right. But because they say no? Because they don't know their job, because of all these things, what happens? As human beings, we are bad with filling information gaps right, and we will fill them in. Or we're bad with having gaps Let them in. Or we're bad with having gaps, let's put it that way. So when we don't have clarity on something and that lasts long enough, we're going to fill it in with our own narrative, and nine times out of 10, we're going to be wrong and we start creating assumptions about things and jump to conclusions and rush into judgment. We don't lean into our curiosity very naturally. So I think groups help people.
Speaker 1:You.
Speaker 2:I think stand on the shoulders of that generosity and get people to lean into that curiosity piece and really get people to start caring about one another and treating each other as people. That's kind of cool.
Speaker 1:So curiosity and judgment are two words that piqued my interest. Can you say more about those and I know they're not related, maybe they are, but let's they are.
Speaker 2:I think they're hugely related when we think about, you know, creating vulnerability in a room. So you know the difference between and again, I'm not telling you anything, you don't know, but in terms of our respective kind of understanding of these terms, I think is always kind of fascinating, right, because I think when people want to be open in the way they express themselves, you know, sure you can do that. I could say, hey, I'm a new grandfather again as of four months ago, kind of thing. Well, that's very open, it's sharing something personal and all that. It's not particularly vulnerable. I don't think I'm going to be judged for that. Okay, you know people are going to say, oh, that's stupid, or you know, that's just not anything I'm worried about.
Speaker 2:But if I want to be vulnerable and I want to talk about something, a decision that I made that I don't think is going to land the same with everybody, or a mistake I made or something I don't know where, I feel that my currency as a fellow business executive, at whatever level, is going to be compromised in that way.
Speaker 2:Now I'm going to feel vulnerable.
Speaker 2:If you can create an environment where you're kind of as best you can take judgment off the table, because people lean into their curiosity as opposed to rushing, to judgment, making assumptions or jumping to conclusions. Right, if we can train our brain to ask questions, tell me more about that. You know, I want to understand this better and come from that place of understanding, as opposed to a place of winning, you know, or being right or that kind of thing, you know, I think makes a huge difference. So I think they are very related and the more that I do this, the more I feel that I recognize that the better we can get about leaning into our curiosity, the easier life is going to be. And it doesn't just about group meetings, as you well know. This is our friends, our family, our, you know, our colleagues, everybody who we work with. If we just really listened and really thought, wow, I could ask some really good questions, I actually may be able to learn something here, you know so you know, david Bradford from Stanford talks about curiosity versus certainty.
Speaker 1:Yes, let's talk about certainty and judgment. Do you think there's more judgment when people are more certain of their view?
Speaker 2:I think there can be. You know, sure. I mean I think that if they, because they immediately Sure, I mean I think that they because they immediately dive into that conclusion. What I should be thinking about is if you've come to a completely different place and I respect you, I think you're smart, I think all that I'd love to know how you got to where you got, and that, to me, is kind of the difference. I think we can have certainty, but we can have a level of curiosity as well. And, by the way, sometimes when we do get someone else's perspective, it will, of course, make us rethink our own, and it will do it in a way that helps us solidify our thought about it or create greater certainty, or maybe it says well, hold on, now I've got some certainty about this. But you know, in some instances I need to think about this a little differently, and I think that's a really valuable piece of this.
Speaker 1:Great, great, great, great. So what other attributes are important for the success of these peer groups?
Speaker 2:Well, well, you think about. I think gratitude is a big one. I think you know. Coming at it from that way, I think having a beginner's mind is probably one of the more important things you know.
Speaker 2:You come into a meeting and maybe you have a speaker, maybe you don't, or maybe there's any kind of subject matter that's being talked about. Um, you know, as I mentioned when I get into this situation where if you look on Amazon and you know type in leadership under books, it'll give you 60,000 different. You know entries, but we probably don't need 60,000 different books on leadership. But it does make a point that you might read a book about leadership and I might read the same book, but, boy, that book just landed with you in a big way. Maybe it didn't land with me so much. Maybe I read another book and I'm like, wow, that connects with me in some ways, that maybe something else didn't.
Speaker 2:So I think there's real value to having all of this in front of us so that when we come to a meeting and someone's going to give a talk that we, you know, we've heard what we've read, how many books have read, how many We've seen the subject, we've seen this movie, or so we think so many times and it's very easy to be decisive and kind of close ourselves off a bit when in fact our job should be and someone described it this way they said we need to observe like scientists in questions, like detectives.
Speaker 2:Our idea is to sit back and apprehend those nuggets of information that are going to be like aha.
Speaker 2:Yes, I've heard this topic a million times, but there's something about how someone framed something or a story they told or a piece of research they put in front of us that says, wow, that was a learning moment for me. If we don't come into things with that beginner's mind, next thing, you know, we are shutting our. That's that right Fixed mindset versus, you know, growth mindset, and so I think that becomes a huge part of it as well. So I think when we think about, you know, being vulnerable, being curious, being grateful, having that beginner's mind, I think, if we come into it, that's a pretty healthy, healthy start to things, because at the end of the day, we're trying to really create a lot of psychological safety among one another in a setting where we can trust that what we're going to talk about here stays here, and that that gives us the freedom I hope, both in terms of how we express ourselves and how well we listen, that we'll make the most out of everyone's time together.
Speaker 1:Great stuff. What about the opposite? What scenarios or examples have you seen lead to challenges in peer groups, whether those challenges ended a group altogether, or whether it caused the member to leave or be asked to leave?
Speaker 2:one, and what I mean by that is that you and I might be in a group together and we think we have some clarity about how we are to conduct ourselves in that group, until we don't until someone says something or does something in a way that feels that lands poorly in some respects right. There are a lot of different groups out there. Some have a great deal, I would say I would almost call them combative. I mean, the level of the way everyone challenges one another and the candor they bring to those conversations is really rather extraordinary. Now, that's been practiced, that's been, you know, done over time with a unique set of people who deal with one another in that way and don't think a thing of it. That's just how they roll, that's who they are and that's their thing. But put one of those folks into another group where, all of a sudden, that would be like a shock to the system somewhere and it could be incredibly disruptive.
Speaker 2:I think there are times rarely when confidentiality is broken in a group, and at least my experience has not been that someone does it in a malicious way. It's usually when someone comes home from their group meeting, right, maybe it's, whether it's a half day meeting, full day meeting or whatever. And they get home and their partner's there and they say, well, hey, how was your day today? How was your meeting? Meeting was great. They're like don't tell me great, you were there for eight hours. Like, tell me what it was, what you're talking about. And that's sometimes where, inadvertently, somebody shares something about what someone brought to the group. It doesn't stay in that private setting. Someone runs into somebody's spouse or friend or whatever at a grocery store and says, oh, I heard you're selling your company. It's like, well, you know, all of a sudden, you know now you've got a thing. So this has to be, I think, a level of intentionality and a level of understanding about confidentiality. And I guess I think about it from a standpoint of, if you can which I think this is just good advice in general stay out of the business of telling other people's stories. You're going to keep yourself out of trouble pretty much most of the time, or all the time. You know, like, if I, if I come home and I want to talk about, well, here's what I shared in the meeting, here's what I talked about, and I share that with my spouse or whatever, chances are good that A she's aware of it anyway, and B, that it shares some of the dialogue without giving up anybody else's. You know confidentiality in that regard, right? So yeah, I think if people are concerned that the environment isn't confidential, then all of a sudden the environment's not safe, confidential, then all of a sudden the environment's not safe. Or if someone is challenged in a meeting in a way that you know is a problem, it doesn't just hurt the psychological safety of that one person, as you well know. It hurts it for everyone, because you don't want to be that next person next time at the next meeting. So I think those are the kinds of things that can be.
Speaker 2:I think you have to have real clarity about who we are, what are our ground rules, how do we roll here and what does that look like? And it's a lot of what I do. One of the workshops I do is for brand new groups, so it's an aspirational exercise. It's like you think you know what you joined and to some degree you do but you don't really understand what the potential and what the power of this group really is all about. And I think when you can capture people's imagination as to what that looks like, then they go whoa. There's like way more to this than I ever imagined it would be, for how do we conduct one another? What are the values and behaviors that we believe are important to be great contributing members to this group? Right? What does that look like for us? And start from that foundation and just build from there?
Speaker 1:Leo, what do you say when somebody says oh, we have peer groups, we have ERGs.
Speaker 2:Is that the same thing? You know every group. It's kind of interesting, right, because we can put labels on all of these different groups and kind of depending on how they run and how they don't run can mean the difference between it being more similar or more different, right. So I think when we think about peer groups, we really do think about a place where people can come share opportunities, challenges and decisions that they've got coming up in their lives with people who can empathize with you know maybe what they're going through, who. They can share those experiences with one another and they can feel heard, you know, and so you can look at all kinds of whether it's a council, an EOG, a mastermind group, peer group, a forum, whatever you want to call any of them. How you run is really kind of more or less what it's all about and how to maximize the potential of it.
Speaker 1:So the peer groups you and I know on the low side are six members, maybe sometimes even less, but I would say, you know, in my world eight is probably ideal and yours it's 18, 20, something like that.
Speaker 2:So there's always an interesting question, because I have people all the time say well, what's the ultimate size peer group and it's a big, it depends, right, depends who's in the room. It depends on a lot of things. So when I see groups, for example, I've seen groups as big as 22. And I've seen groups as small as basically five or six. Now, I've seen in both those situations they've really found their groove in that setting, whatever that may happen to be, whether it's that smaller, more intimate setting, or it's with having 22 people in a room, where just the way that that whole thing is facilitated and managed and all that can be quite effective it's done well.
Speaker 2:What usually freaks people out, though, is if you're in a group of eight and someone is thinking, oh, if you put 16 people in there, that to them, feels overwhelming.
Speaker 2:Well, of course it will Right, but when they go from 8 to 10 to 12 to 14, and it kind of finds its way and you're not adding people to the group to add numbers, you're adding people to the group because we are missing some voices in this conversation that we believe if we add those voices, assuming they can chin the bar on all the values and behaviors that we know are important to being a good contributor and they can add value, then that can be a really good thing.
Speaker 2:So I think, if you approach it less about numbers and more about do we have the voices around the table that help us facilitate the conversations that we want to have, I think to me that matters more. But as we all these groups are little snowflakes, you know they're all. They're all. They're all different, you know in their own way, and that's what the fun part about doing this I don't. I don't walk into any group and feel like, oh, I've done this before, I've never met these people, I don't know this particular group and I'm there learning as much as everyone else is, and that's the real fun part of the work.
Speaker 1:We else is, and that's the real fun part of the work.
Speaker 2:We too have to have a mindset yeah, yeah, 100, it's all. It's all about that, yeah, and then you know there's nothing like you know getting, you know it's easy to go in. So I've worked right now, in terms of the active workshops I do, with about 700 groups. Okay, easy for me to go into any of these situations, feel like, okay, there isn't anything. Anyone's going to ask me that I haven't heard 20 times or whatever. Right, I mean it would be easy to think that way. It's clearly not true. I mean I get, I get questions, I get concerns, I get um points of view on certain things that are really different all the time and it's like really fun. That's what makes it, that's what makes it cool.
Speaker 1:That is, and definitely. You know, our lives are not static. I didn't stop growing 10 years ago. Life keeps coming at us or being offered to us, and so things change, which brings me to my next question. Sometimes I come across a group that has this mentality along the lines of well, I've known you for 10 years or five years, whatever it may be. I need to go join a new group and get to know new people. What do you say about that?
Speaker 2:So there's no question that sometimes people will outgrow a group or the objectives they have are different than what they once were. Or you know, so I get that. I also don't think that it has to be an either. Or, you know, I get questions all the time. But should I join an all women's group or should I be part of a group with mixed gender? Right, you know why is it an either? They both have value in their own way. So I don't know why you'd have to make the choice, considering. You think that this time, you know, is worthwhile. So you know, I just tend to think about it like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that makes sense. And how long have you seen a group stay together?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, I've spoken to some groups that have been together just over 25 years and some of the founding members were still in the group.
Speaker 1:Isn't that something?
Speaker 2:So you might imagine, right, I mentioned I do this one workshop. That's an aspirational exercise for brand new groups. Well, I do another one, of course, for groups that have been together a long time, and it's much more of a self-assessment exercise. So, as you might imagine, the first time I did this it was a group. I'll never forget them. They were out of St Louis, there were 17 members, some of the founding members were still in the group and I'm in the front of the room saying, all right, we're going to talk about the group today. And they're looking at me like, really Like, I think we got this by now. I think we pretty much got a good handle on this and I wasn't sure they were correct, right. So but as we go through the session and it's happened every single time I've worked with these groups the better the group, the more experienced they are, the more you know understanding they have of all of this, the more opportunities they see for themselves to get better. And that's what's really fun. And what they recognize is that, you know, none of these things we've talked about, I don't care. Like we said, it's psychological safety, it's gratitude, curiosity, beginner's mind, whatever, but they're not fixed, you know to your point about this is constantly in motion, right? So whenever you start having the attitude that, oh, we got that, we can just check off the box, that isn't going to work really well anymore.
Speaker 2:You know, I developed something recently actually just in the last three or four months that talks about the four phases of group psychological safety and they're basically so, if you look at, if you think about a two by two and you've got like, on the left hand side, you may be looking at early stage groups, tenured groups, on the right, on the vertical axis, you'd have intentionality and then on the horizontal axis, you'd have capacity. So now on your lower left, you have a group. They're brand new. They come together To me, they're in that caution phase, right. They're kind of sticking their toes in the water. They're figuring out what's going on. You have some people who may be naturally open, who are likely to model the way for sharing for others, so that once they start feeling that the environment is safe, they start demonstrating the psychological courage to actually participate in it. Right, and do that. So you take it to the courage phase when you get, by and large, everyone more or less at that place where they see their commitment to one another and their ability to be vulnerable, not just about an act of courage, but they see it as more generosity. Now they get into that upper right, that community phase, where they are everybody's willing to play. They go deep on issues. They have an incredible capacity of caring and curiosity and candor and all these things and really killing it.
Speaker 2:Right Now, that group that's been together a while can also. What happens? Well, maybe they don't quite prepare the same way they always used to. They're not bringing the things they used to. They're not quite listening with the same ear and that same level of intentionality. So when the intentionality goes down, so does the capacity. And now you end up in the lower right, where you're, in this, been together a long time.
Speaker 2:How do we rekindle that fire? How do we get you guys back up to where? You know you've experienced it, you still have the capacity, you're just not as intentional about it anymore. So we try to move them back into that space. And so, again, none of this is fixed. And we're human, and you know. There's just we have to, you know, I think.
Speaker 2:I think we give each other some grace sometimes in these meetings, right? These conversations aren't rehearsed. So, you know, maybe someone does say something that lands, you know, in a way where someone has to give them the benefit of the doubt. When you think about psychological safety, that's a lot of what it is right. It's trusting intent, it's giving people the benefit of the doubt. You may say something to me in a meeting. It's like, oh Mo, that didn't feel great. But I get it Like I know where you're coming from, so I'm going to, you know, let that part of it go and I'll lean into what I understood, the intent and what you're really trying to get at here. And you know, and by the same token, as the person who may be challenging someone at any given moment with a question or something, to be respectful and be mindful that you know. That's kind of where we are. But again we go back to that group that I told you was like super combative. Somehow it works for them, someone else it doesn't, but they find their way.
Speaker 1:What are maybe a couple of specific examples of real benefits that you've seen in the field Somebody being in a group like this and having real benefit, or an organization incorporating these groups and saying, hey, here's some measurable benefit that we've seen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. So I told a story in my first book of a member who owned a local drugstore chain in California and at the time he was being pursued by the likes of the Walgreens and CVSs and folks who were buying up all these little you know chains right to create essentially their national network of drug stores. Well, he goes to his group meeting, says he's being approached for sale, he's thinking about doing it and he's got this balance sheet, he's got all his financials and everything and he lays them out for everybody and he says, ok, here's what I think the company's worth. What do you all think? And someone said this is not. They're not buying you for what's on the balance sheet. This is a strategic purchase for them. Ask for triple what you think you should be.
Speaker 2:So now the guy's scared to death, right Going in with these folks coming in now he's going to meet with them, but at least he had the confidence his group gave him that no, this will be a good number.
Speaker 2:Sure enough, and I forget which large chain it was. But anyway, he meets with them, puts up the number that was triple what he was going to sell it for, and they go great and they sign, and that was that and it was like so. Now of course the guy's wondering whether maybe should have gone four times, but the point is that he said basically, he said, trust me, that paid for any dues I would ever pay to be part of this group forever. And, by the way, that group still exists today. They were formed originally under Tech, the executive committee, and it's Tech 7, the group is called and everybody in it is like wildly successful basically. But and they meet like once or twice a year, like they'll meet once in California, they meet in Hawaii, they do you know this kind of stuff, but they, they remain connected even though they're all octogenarians or even older.
Speaker 2:It's really rather extraordinary because those bonds and what they did for one another and how they impacted each other's lives was so extraordinary. But you know, and then you hear all kinds of you know more everyday. You know kinds of things where people really have helped, either introducing a new policy to their employees that when they get help from the members of their group about how to frame that message in a way that's different from what a CEO originally was going to put out there, only to have the employees embrace that policy in a way that was rather extraordinary right. Or you know two instances and it's kind of funny and this kind of goes to kind of something I know you've got a lot of experience with too. Sometimes people bring something to the table and they're really talking about a symptom. They're not always bringing the core issue to the table, right.
Speaker 2:So on two occasions I've sat through meetings where a CEO literally brought to the group how do I know it's time to fire my CFO? Ok, now, both instances those CEOs told the most godawful stories about what was going on back in the company. So now you're listening to this, thinking to yourself like it was so bad that you really went through your mind. It's OK when we get a break, call the authorities and have that person arrested and escorted out of the building. That's how bad it was in both cases.
Speaker 2:So the point that we got to fairly quickly, though, was you know what? Your real issue here isn't how do I know when it's time to fire my CFO? If you could bump in, you could bump into anybody in the street. Tell them 30 seconds worth of what you just told us, and the answer is obvious, and you know it is for you, too, I said, the real question is in the face of something so obvious that could have such a detrimental impact in your company, what is it that's keeping you from making the decision? Now, all of a sudden, we're like okay, now we're getting into the thick of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now we're having the real conversation. We're thinking about something, obviously, that has far greater effect and utility for that CEO than just answering that one particular question. So, you know, I think groups can be. You know, as you well know, and we all know this too, we're awesome at solving other people's problems, you know. But doing it ourself is hard. We need help and, of course, what groups do is they're really not there to solve your problem for you. They're there for you to discover it for yourself.
Speaker 1:You know, the answer lies within us and so, yeah, Listen, I couldn't agree with you more, of course, as you know. I mean, look, you could actually research any question and get an answer through AI or Google or whatever. 100% Right, it's not just about the answers, it's about what's behind, what's holding you up or what you don't know. You don't know and obviously, having that courage from your peers, having their support from your peers, hearing their perspectives, can be eye-opening in a very different way. And, of course, the emotional journey. You know, I didn't just sell the company for X, y, z with my eyes closed and it was a blip and an irrelevant situation in my life. You know, I didn't just sell the company for XYZ with my eyes closed and it was a blip and an irrelevant situation in my life. It was an emotional journey and that's the story here. Yeah, I thought I was going to get X and my group told me you're going to get 3X. I think that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:It is. But you bring up a really great point that there's so many other things going on. Here too, he's selling a family business that they had in their family for decades, Right? So there's something that comes with letting go of something like that I don't care what the number is, and so there's all sides of the story. And again, you know, I think you make a great point about how holistic the conversations can be and how important that we're not just dealing with a tiny little slice of things that you know, we are dealing with it in a very human, you know level, and I think that's you know, something that is just, it's so powerful, absolutely so, leo, you've written how many books.
Speaker 2:Three, and I'm writing the second edition right now. I'll have the manuscript done by the 10th of January and I'll say this out loud to everyone so that I actually will have it done by the 10th of January, publicly right here.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm doing it right here, but yeah, it's basically Peer Innovation was written in 2020 after I'd worked with about 125 groups. Of course, it was a lot of field work and research and everything that went in prior to doing all that, but again, now that that number is about 700. And because, as I mentioned, I'm learning all the time um, um, you know rewriting, um, you know some of the existing chapters and, of course, adding six additional chapters, um, to this book and it's basically going to be called Peer Innovation also, but the subtitle is going to be powered, basically forged by CEO forums, perfected for teams, and so it deals with, it talks with both sides of the whole groups and teams, so that, if you want to join a peer group, great. If you want to apply these principles to your team, great. And if you want to have groups working alongside your teams and your company, and again, which I think is an unbelievably powerful mechanism, just real, quickly, think about learning and development Great content, great stuff that people have access to, and I don't care if it comes in the form of micro learning or, you know, all day, employee development days, things like that.
Speaker 2:The tricky part about it is that there's really no mechanism to operationalize that learning, and I think groups can be incredibly powerful at saying, okay, we just had this experience together, maybe it was an all day employee development day.
Speaker 2:What are the two things we got from that day that if we actually decided today be intentional about changing and acting on this tomorrow, what difference could that make for us and this organization? You know those conversations don't typically take place. What happens is you get back from employee development day, then you're worried about how do I make up for all the stuff I missed while I was gone, and then it becomes thing. So I think groups, among other many, functions, as you well know, but I think that's one way to take money you're already investing, probably not getting anywhere near the ROI. You should be getting for it and using these groups as a mechanism to really drive that. And I think, with everything that's going to happen, going forward in workplaces today, and the pace of change and the generations in the workforce and all of that that we've got in front of us, I think that it's an ideal time to really be looking at, as groups, as a very powerful piece of that combination right of human and artificial intelligence, right, this collective intelligence that we can access.
Speaker 1:So I want to wrap with just the list of benefits that you could think of for a company to start peer groups within that company.
Speaker 2:Happier employees, more productive employees, employees who have greater clarity, who have more effective communication, collaborate more effectively and improve their overall capacity to get everything done that you need to get everyone to get done.
Speaker 1:Leo, thank you for this amazing conversation. I knew that you're going to share lots of valuable things that would be incredibly relevant for our audience and, in fact, you more than met the mark. Thank you again. You could follow the Heart of Business podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on a podcast visibility, so if you enjoyed today's episode, leave a review and help others find the show. Finally, you can find all our episodes on our website at internationalfacilitatorsorganizationcom. Thank you for listening and have a great day.
