Transcript: Jon Gordon, Building Trusting Relationships through Positive Leadership

You lead where you are. So you're able to influence the people around you by loving, serving, and caring. If you do that for the people around you, you're going to gain influence with them. And that's leadership. It really is about living with purpose.

I mean, you can't just do it to check a box. You can't do it because the book said so or the talk said so. It's the purpose that drives the caring. It's about having a why. Like, why am I doing this?

How can I make an impact? If you're building something, you know what? People are going to be working in that building. People are going to be living in that building. People are going to be contributing to the economy in the building.

Whatever it is, like, I'm working with this team. It's about, hey, let me help this team become the best they can be. So we're showing up every day and we're doing the project, but we're also making each other better. So if you find that intangible thing that can inspire you and motivate you, and you have this why, you really don't get burned out. We don't get burned out because of what we do.

We get burned out because we forget why we do it. Hello, and welcome to the Constructor Podcast, The Best Way to Build It, episode number 63. I'm your host, Brynny Campbell-Turner, and this podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects. We talk about fostering trusting relationships, help you to understand how to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule, and most importantly, exceed your end user's desires. Last week, we spoke with Damon Hernandez, founder and executive director of the AEC Hackathon.

Damon spoke with us about tearing down the walls disguised as generational, gender, and ethnic biases and coming together to elevate the industry by addressing frustrations, utilizing shared platforms, and developing software hacks. This can all be done by combining industry professionals, software developers, and government agencies over a weekend to create software solutions that can solve the Monday problem. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, check it out at constructor.com slash ep62. Today, we're speaking with John Gordon, author of quite a few bestsellers, including The Energy Bus, You Win in the Locker Room First, The No Complaining Rule, and the most recent book that was released last year, The Power of Positive Leadership.

He just finished up a book also called The Power of a Positive Team that will be released this year. So John not only is a great author and sought after keynote speaker, but he has consulted with college and professional sports teams, as well as large companies, teaching them about how and why they should live with more vision, passion, positivity, and purpose. So with that, let's get into the interview. John, welcome to the Constructor podcast. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. So you've written a slew of books, including You Win in the Locker Room First, The Energy Bus, The No Complaining Rule, and most recently, a book that was released last year, The Power of Positive Leadership, many of which are bestsellers. And you consult with the Atlanta Falcons, Miami Heat, and the LA Dodgers, corporate clients who worked with Dell Public's Southwest Airlines, just to name a few, teaching them about how they should live with more vision, passion, positivity, and purpose. So I reached out to you because I thought you'd be a great person to talk about positivity and purpose as it relates to life in general, and how it can apply to the construction industry.

We talk a lot about here on the podcast about building trusting relationships, respecting people, and exceeding the end user's desires. So whoever the project is for, how do we exceed their desires? You have to have leadership in order to do that, and much more positive leadership. So for those who don't know you very well in the audience, I think you're qualified to speak about positive leadership. But could you tell us a little bit about how you got down the path of positivity and why you've dedicated your life to teaching others about it?

Well, I'm not naturally positive, so I tell people all the time. I actually go towards the negative. My dad was a New York City police officer, undercover narcotics. He was shot a few times. My dad was not too big on positivity, and he was a very loving man, but just the most negative guy on the planet.

You'd get up in the morning, you'd say, hey, good morning, dad. He'd say, what's so good about it? And so my dad, again, was not very positive. My mom wasn't the most positive person. They're very loving, but just not positive.

And so I guess I grew up in a world of a lot of negative mindsets, and I wanted to be more positive later on in my 20s and early 30s. It was something that was really affecting my life. It was keeping me from being what I wanted to be. I was a blamer. I was a complainer.

My wife had had enough. She said, if you don't change, we're over. She said, I love you, but I'm not going to spend my life living with someone who's so miserable. And so that began the journey of saying, okay, what do I want to do? Why am I here?

Why am I so miserable? I had been in the restaurant business. I went to go work for a dot com and technology. I went to law school for a year and a half. I actually dropped out after a year and a half, realized I didn't want to be a lawyer.

I knew I wanted to do my own thing. I knew I wanted to do something, but writing and speaking really became my calling of what I was meant to do. And then what was I going to write and speak about? Well, I wanted to learn about positivity. I wanted to be more positive.

And so I started with that. And then as I started to work with teams and organizations and people, I started to realize that the key to changing organizations, the key to influencing lives and companies and teams and schools was leadership. That's where you have the greatest impact. So positive leadership became my two loves together, leadership and positivity, bringing them together to say, okay, how can I be positive myself? And then how can I lead others with more optimism, with more belief, with more vision?

How can I lead others in a way that they want to follow you? They don't have to, they want to. I just love, I love how your life has evolved into what it is today. You definitely have the opportunity to make rippling impact by simply sharing how people can just take different approaches to affect their lives by simply being positive. Yeah.

I mean, you know, people really relate to me. I do a lot of keynotes. I speak at a lot of conferences and people always love the fact that they realize that I'm not naturally positive. They love that I have to work at it. They love that my daughter will say to me, dad, you need to read your own book.

And so the energy bus was rejected by over 30 publishers. It took it a while to get out into the world. It took five years for it to become a best seller. And now it's sold over a million copies. This is 11 years later.

I mean, it's been such a journey of rejection, adversity and struggles. And so I've had to deal with my own negativity, my own adversity. So I know what people in the construction business are going through. I know what people in any industry are going through because we're all facing the same challenges. We're all facing negativity, adversity, obstacles, and that's the life journey.

And when you've walked it and you've been through it, you can help others through it. And if I was naturally positive, I probably couldn't help someone as much because people really relate and connect to me and my work because it's so real, it's authentic. And they could see, okay, if this guy could turn around, if he could become more positive, so can I. And I just love hearing from people who have become more positive. I love hearing from people who have really improved in their careers.

I mean, I work with the LA Dodgers the last two years. Dave Roberts worked with him and his team and he was manager of the year. It was so exciting to see. Worked with Sean McVeigh of the Rams this past year. He was a rookie coach and he just won Coach of the Year.

Now, am I the reason for their success? Of course not. I spoke to the Cleveland Browns two years ago. So I am definitely not the reason for their success, but it's great to be able to help leaders be all that they're meant to be. One thing that I find, you mentioned the different teams, the construction industry, similar to sports in that we come together as teams knowing that we're here for one project or season.

We may not work with these same people again after the project's over, or it's very rare that you work with the exact same team together again. But we have to build trust with each other. We have to be transparent with lots of information, be highly collaborative and execute at a high level. And we report to multiple stakeholders. All that being said, I want to know what does positivity do for us and what might be some of the statistical results that can be realized due to adopting a positive mindset intertwined with our goals as a team?

Well, I love what you talked about, about construction teams being a team and every project is different. Yeah, that's such a great analogy because I just finished writing a book called The Power of a Positive Team and I examined all sorts of teams, examined sports teams and musical teams and writing teams and hospital teams and you name it, construction teams and all these same teams abide by the same principles to be great. The book is about what makes great teams great and the same principles apply.

It's a group of people that come together and they have a shared vision and a greater purpose. It starts there. Where are we going? What's our vision of what we're building? But what's the greater purpose for why we're building it?

I had several people say when you're here to build something great, you're not going to let egos get in the way because the focus is on the vision of purpose of what you're building. Then it's about the optimism and the positivity and the belief that you have while you're building it because you're going to have setbacks, you're going to have obstacles. What I have found is that great teams stay positive together. They stay positive through the challenges rather than running from each other or turning away from each other.

They turn towards each other. They believe together and they have this optimism that allows them to get through their challenges together. They have what I call a collective grit. In the book and in my talks, I talk about overcoming negativity and weeding out the energy vampires, that sabotage team. But the other key component of a team is that you have to come together through relationships.

You have to have this bond of communication, connection, and commitment. Communication, connection, and commitment. Those are the keys to really building a strong team because you will never have commitment without connection and you need to have communication in order to connect. And so when you're building a project and you're building a team, you're coming together and you have to have that trust and you have to have that trust and that relationship. So relationships are the foundation upon which winning teams are built.

And then we know that communication and connection and the commitment are what really develops the relationship to build that strong bond and strong team. So it's all about trust, all about relationship, all about selflessness, and it's about we before me. So like, I'm going to focus on we instead of me. Great teams are all about the we, not the me. Absolutely.

And you're really getting into my next question. Sure. I find that a lot of teams, when they work together over time, unless they've had major success, there's sort of an inevitability for them to fall apart unless they're working on their commitment. They tend to end up not liking each other, for instance. So you talked about commitment, connection, and then what's the other C?

Communication, connection, commitment. Yes. Now, I know you have a plethora of approaches on what people can do to become better teams, right? To build those connections, to build those commitments and to have better communication. I actually heard you on social media and heard you talking about particularly defining one word for your team.

And I've actually defined one word for this year, and it sounded like that was your recommendation to define a word for the year. So could you talk with us a little bit about doing that and what some of the benefits might be? Yeah, that's one great exercise. I mean, I worked with Clemson football and every year, and I've worked with them the last six years every year, the team all picks a word for the year. Coach Sweeney Dabo picks a word for the year.

And it's a lot of fun as each guy picks their word, they share it with the team, they share their why behind the word, like why they chose it. And it's a powerful team building exercise. And that word is something that's meant to motivate you, inspire you, and move you forward. So what word would you choose to be your best? What word will motivate you and inspire you and drive you each day?

Because we're going to get down, we're going to have bad days. So that word is sort of like a purpose and vision that allows you to move forward in a positive way. So if everyone on the team has a word and they remember their word, and they live their world, it's a really powerful way to come together. And then the act of sharing with each other is really powerful. You know, I wrote a book called The Carpenter.

So I think that's a great message also for the construction industry. And it's about not just being a carpenter, the book's really about being a craftsman. And so carpenters show up to just build something, but the craftsman shows up to build a work of art. They're there to create a masterpiece. That one word is something that should drive you to create your masterpiece each day.

There's another approach that you've mentioned, and it's about your defining moment. Could you share with us about how to carry out that exercise? Yeah, I mean, I've had a lot of successful teams do this where each person goes around and shares a defining moment in their life that helped them become who they are today. So they share their story. And once you understand someone's story, you get to know them a whole lot better.

But you can also do the Triple H exercise, which is hero hardship highlights. So each person shares who their hero is, a hardship they faced, and then a highlight, Triple H. And I had an Australian rules football team or read my book. They did this exercise. They won the championship this year for the first time in 36 years.

I was hearing from people from Australia. They sent me a magazine article about this team, and they all talked about this exercise, the Triple H that they read in my book, this American, John Gordon, they were laughing at saying this American. And they did this exercise, but they were saying how powerful it was. These big, strong, tough guys sharing their stories, breaking down, and then really becoming a strong team because they got to know each other. And that connection led to a greater commitment.

A good friend of mine is with the Navy Seals, and he's actually a former Navy Seal, still works with them a little bit. And he just talked about how what makes them truly bond together is their selflessness, and their ability, and their willingness to give themselves up for their team members. But that happens because they get to know each other because they have this bond of brotherhood that leads to that. You don't get that without the brotherhood. I often joke with them that they do these team building exercises that they take teams in the water.

And I said, listen, I don't think you have to drown together to become a strong team. I said, I do other exercises like these vulnerability exercises. I actually think these are more powerful because you get to the heart. And so we joke around about that. We get caught up in a routine and sometimes get away from commitments due to the technical nature of what we do.

How do you make sure you get back to the commitment when sometimes we fall apart? Well, it comes down to really caring. If you care, you won't let distractions get in the way. If you truly care about your craft and you're committed to it, then all the other things should pale in comparison. And so you're so committed to your craft, to your work, to your focus and your commitments that takes precedence, that that's your priority.

And then other things are not as important. So you do first things first. And C.S. Lewis said, if you do first things first, second things actually increase. So focus on what matters most, focus on your commitments and everything else improves.

And I also want to encourage people to focus on serving others first. If you serve others first, if you truly put others first, it's amazing how you grow. When you help others improve, you improve. When you help others grow, you grow. And that's really the power of leadership.

I mean, in the carpenter, the key success principles are love, serve and care. And these are the greatest success principles of all, love, serve, care. If you love your team, you love what you do, you serve others and you show you care, you're going to stand out in a world where many don't care. If I'm on a construction project, the difference between success and failure, a great project and the average project, I guarantee will be the care and the caring that everyone puts into the project, to the work, into each other, into the design, into the finish, into all the little details that make it unique.

And you could see whether a craftsman built that or just someone who was going through the motions. So caring really is the ultimate success strategy. I was listening to your podcast, The Positive University, which I know is fairly new now, but I really liking it thus far. And I heard you talk about how everyone has a purpose, they have a God given purpose, and we should live with that purpose and live on purpose. I really liked that.

So how do you recommend that we do that in our jobs and in our lives? I know you mentioned love, serve, care, but there's a accountability factor there for us to continue to do that. It really is about living with purpose. I mean, you can't just do it to check a box. You can't do it because the book said so or the talk said so.

It's the purpose that drives the caring. It's about having a why. Why am I doing this? How can I make an impact? If you're building something, you know what?

People are going to be working in that building. People are going to be living in that building. People are going to be contributing to the economy in the building. Whatever it is, I'm working with this team. It's about, hey, let me help this team become the best they can be.

So we're showing up every day and we're doing the project, but we're also making each other better. So if you find that intangible thing that can inspire you and motivate you and you have this why, you really don't get burned out. We don't get burned out because of what we do. We get burned out because we forget why we do it. That's so true.

And I find that there's so many layers of leadership. So you have your owner operator, you're working for your design company, whoever you're working for. That's your internal boss that you're working for. And then same thing with the contractor. There's so many layers and layers.

And I find that leadership comes in many forms. How would you recommend maybe leading from the side or leading up, if you will? Do you have any recommendations for that? Yeah, you lead where you are. So you're able to influence the people around you by loving, serving and caring.

If you do that for the people around you, you're going to gain influence with them and that's leadership. So it's leading the people that are around you, that are closest to you. People always say, John, I want to be a leader. What do I do? Where do I start?

I said, love, serve and care, start there, one person at a time. If you influence the people around you, you're a leader. And as you lead in that way, you'll start to influence more and more people. It's such a simple message and it's so deep and it's so wide. I so much appreciate that.

If there's any one thing that you would recommend for the construction industry, I know you mentioned you just wrapped up your book on teams. I would encourage them to actually have some team building sessions. I mean, we do it in sports all the time. We do it in the armed forces. Well, hey, let's get together.

A group of men and women come together and say, okay, what kind of team do we want to be? What kind of project do we want to create? What's our vision? What's our purpose? And are we committed to making it the best we can be?

Really get together. Every day I would have a short five minute team building session where we talk about something inspirational. We talk about the project for the day, the goals for the day, and we go, okay, let's get started. So I would actually come together like a huddle every day and work to be a stronger team. To further John's point, I wanted to share a little snippet of an interview I did with Frank Barnes, who I spoke with at Malene Construction Institute Congress last year.

While in Barbados, that's during 2008, 2010 to give you an idea of the time period, we used to meet at about 1130 along a walkway and the guys used to stand in a semicircle formation and the supervisors and the project manager and the construction manager used to stand along the pavement and we'd have a 30 minute safety meeting. We found that was effective and then out of the blue one morning we said, why don't we meet on a Monday morning? And then I said, but why don't we meet in a circle?

So it started off then. But because of the nature of the job and the problems we're having, bashing the guys and the spreading negatives would not help us. So we started a positive way. We started off with a prior and then we asked each of the supervisors of the construction foreman to speak about their people. They would applaud the people for what they would have done the previous week and then they would share the production numbers and then they would actually make a commitment of what they're going to produce for this week.

We would have a section where we have safety talks and then the last part of the meeting would be, if someone is visiting, could be someone from the bank, could be our director, it could be the owner, we'd ask them to share what they have learned from the meeting and share something that can encourage the guys before they go to work. And then normally after that the project manager would close the meeting. And it normally lasts about half an hour. So we took the model because that was up to 2010.

Then 2010 to 2012 we went to Jamaica and we took it to another level because in Jamaica we had a very controlled environment. We started the project right. The project had a strong start. So we were able to do it well there and then to the extent that our owners, like from the UK because it was a foreign firm, when they planned their visits to Jamaica and they planned their visit to the site to come on a Monday morning to experience it, that was a phenomenal thing.

So as I was saying to you earlier, there's now part of the link conversations that we have and I call this the sixth conversation. If you want to hear more of this episode where I speak with Frank Barnes, you can find it at constructor.com. Let's get back to the interview. I know that contractors will typically do a safety moment but sometimes the perspective is more on the safety on the job site and less about the safety of the relationships, making sure to keep them strong. And I think that's a perfect example is to just make sure to say, okay let's focus on just caring about each other.

Whether it's, hey let's make sure that we have lunch together later or let's make sure that we grab a cup of coffee here together. One of the number one factors in a great team is emotional safety. So I love that you said we talk about safety but not the safety of the relationship. Emotional safety, the ability to feel cared for, to have trust, to know that you could say something without getting ridiculed, that you might come up with an idea and even if it's wrong, they don't hammer you for it.

And so emotional safety, the freedom to be able to speak your mind is a key component of a creative strong team. So I think that's something that we should keep in mind as teams. And I've written The Power of Positive Leadership. I recommend the leaders of construction projects read that. And then when The Power of Positive Team comes out, definitely read that as a team because I wrote that book in a way that teams should read it together and can read it together and then discuss the key principles and then ask, are we doing it?

That's going to be the magic in it. When people actually read it together and implement it together, we're going to see teams transform as a result of that. Could you give us a sneak peek into what one major idea that we can take away before we close this interview? One key idea I want to share with you is that we often talk about grit and being a gritty team. But what I have found is that you don't get team grit without the bonds and the relationships and the trust.

And so when stuff gets hard and we have outside forces that we can't control come into play and start to affect us, if we're not strong on the inside, then we will crumble. The project will crumble. So we have to be strong on the inside to withstand the forces on the outside. And so we create our world, not outside in, we create it inside out. And so it's about building that strong team on the inside to create a strong foundation and a strong structure that withstands the forces on the outside.

So I would say that's your primary thing. Focus on that bond, those connections, the commitment we talked about to be a truly gritty team that will survive any obstacle to create an amazing project. And then with the caring component, it won't just be any project, it will be a masterpiece because you care. I must thank you, John. This was an amazing talk.

Thanks for sharing with the Constructor audience. Hey, thanks for having me. And I appreciate all the people that are out there and listening and doing this work every day. I mean, I know it's not easy. I know it's challenging and I just really admire and appreciate the work they do every day.

Please share with us, where's the best place to find you, learn more about you, find you on social media. Sure. JohnGordon.com, J-O-N Gordon.com, just J-O-N Gordon.com or Twitter at J-O-N Gordon 11. Thanks for listening to this interview with John Gordon. Man, I'm inspired to be more positive.

How about you? Find John Gordon and more about his compelling books about positivity and leadership at Constructor.com slash EP 63. If you heard something valuable in this episode, share it with your friends and colleagues. You can also let me know if you enjoyed our discussion by connecting with me on Twitter at Brittany underscore CT or find me on LinkedIn or you can just email me too at Brittany at Constructor.com. That's B-R-I-T-T-A-N-I-E at ConstructRR.com.

Next week, we'll be starting our new series about blockchain. This will be the second blockchain series we're doing and we're kicking it off with Yucay Chow, gamification, author and international keynote speaker. He is the creator of the Octalysis framework and he's been a leader in the field of behavioral design and influences. We discuss how blockchain influences and motivates certain actions based upon the motivations it's built upon. So Yucay has a fascinating perspective on this as he's an expert in making games more productive and making life more gamified.

So I look forward to sharing this interview with you guys and the rest of the series starting next week. If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, you can do so at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn and iHeartRadio. You can also find replays on Periscope if you find me on Twitter. So please leave a review to show your support and let me know you're enjoying the podcast. I look forward to talking with you guys next week.