Podcast Ep 66 | The CEO's Role as Chief Brand Ambassador

One of the most impor­tant roles for a CEO is Chief Brand Ambas­sador. In that capac­i­ty they must acti­vate the pride with­in their employ­ees in order to build a high per­form­ing cul­ture. Pride for their team, prod­ucts, man­agers, and the organization.

Ulti­mate­ly, if the head of a com­pa­ny does­n’t have a face, the orga­ni­za­tion becomes face­less. And face­less cor­po­ra­tions are very dif­fi­cult to trust.

In this week’s episode we’ll dis­cuss five com­po­nents that make up the CEO’s Role as Chief Brand Ambas­sador. In addi­tion, we’ll address WHY it’s impor­tant for CEOs and lead­ers need to under­stand and per­form the role of an Ambas­sador in their business.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Kevin Lawrence 00:13

Wel­come to the growth whis­pers pod­cast where all and every­thing and all that we can con­sid­er is about build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies because we’d like to, we believe in it. I think it’s fun. And in many cas­es it can make the world a bet­ter place and just great for the peo­ple involved. So I’m Kevin Lawrence are joined today, as always with my co host, Brad Giles, Brad, how you doing today?

Brad Giles 00:34

Good. How are you? I’m doing pret­ty good.

Kevin Lawrence 00:36

I’m doing awe­some. Actu­al­ly. It’s sum­mer here. And when it’s sum­mer, and it’s we’re record­ing this pod­cast in the morn­ing. So it’s bright out­side, and it’s won­der­ful look­ing for­ward to a great day.

Kevin Lawrence 00:49

What are we talk­ing about here today Brad?

Brad Giles 00:53

today, we’re talk­ing about what we call the ambas­sador role. So I wrote a book called made to thrive, the five roles to evolve beyond your lead­er­ship, com­fort zone, maybe thrive. And with­in that one of those five roles of a leader or a CEO, is what we call the ambas­sador role. And so we’re talk­ing about the ambas­sador role, why CEOs and lead­ers need to per­form an ambas­sador role. That’d be great.

Kevin Lawrence 01:26

So it’s not like the ambas­sador, where you go to anoth­er coun­try in a new set up and rep­re­sent your coun­try. It’s what how you rep­re­sent your com­pa­ny, essen­tial­ly, what taught me Great, well, dig­ging into that, and look­ing for­ward to it. So what’s your word of the day? What’s the word for Mr. Giles today?

Brad Giles 01:43

word or phrase? It’s, it’s real­ly about? What do you want to do? So for me in the last week, so many of the con­ver­sa­tions, many of the con­ver­sa­tions that I’ve had with CEOs or busi­ness own­ers have been, what do you want to do? And what I had sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple who are say­ing, Look, it’s the top of the mar­ket. I’ve had an offer to buy the there are list­ed com­pa­nies out there who are hun­gry for deals, and they are, you know, they’re com­ing into our clients, and they’re say­ing, Hey, we want to buy it. And they’re like, they’re flat­tered and think­ing about it. So I come back to Well, what do you want your life to look like in 1,3,5 10 years? Is this what you real­ly want? And after you

Kevin Lawrence 02:40

sell, and after six months, and I’m pok­ing your eyes out, because you’re bored to tears?

Brad Giles 02:45

Yeah,

Kevin Lawrence 02:46

then what are you gonna want to do?

Brad Giles 02:48

Yeah. And so yeah, like, you’ve built this amaz­ing busi­ness. So yeah, for me, it’s what do you want to do? Inter­est­ing, dif­fer­ent one.

Kevin Lawrence 03:01

My Word is fric­tion­less. And that when things go well, in the world, we’ve found ways to remove the fric­tion from wher­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion is, whether it’s deci­sions, how teams func­tion, machines, and, you know, a lot of you know, lead­ing and build­ing com­pa­nies think­ing that all we got to do this, we’ve got to do this, Nicole, what if we just thought about remov­ing fric­tion, and mak­ing it eas­i­er, mak­ing it eas­i­er or fric­tion­less for the cus­tomer to enter or busi­ness, fric­tion­less for the cus­tomer to work with us? fric­tion­less for the employ­ees just basi­cal­ly, and it’s more oper­a­tional think­ing than strate­gic? Right? It’s opti­miza­tion and anoth­er mod­el I cre­at­ed it’s, but it’s real­ly fric­tion­less. How do you make things easy because you know, when there’s peo­ple that you work with or spend time with and there’s not a lot of fric­tion in it. It’s great. Now fric­tion builds up, but then you got to clear it out of the sys­tem, and then things get fric­tion­less and flow again. So that’s it. So what do you want to do? And fric­tion­less are words for today or phras­es for awe­some? Well, let’s see. Oh, speak­ing of the ambas­sador rule, I mean, I’m just think­ing about this we’re prepar­ing for today and I can pic­ture the CEOs that I work with that are out­stand­ing ambas­sadors and play that role real­ly real­ly well. And some love it like it’s actu­al­ly all they want to do yeah, they just want to be ambas­sador and and and those peo­ple will get some good ideas but then there’s the oth­ers who they don’t enjoy that as much. Yeah, it’s not their nat­ur­al style. So So what why do we need an ambas­sador like why is it impor­tant for this to hap­pen? In right and your this is your you’re the expert on this, but why is it impor­tant that happens?

Brad Giles 05:01

Well, in my, in my opin­ion, the first thing that we’ve got to do is to go back and say What does the word invest­ed? Or name? Or where does it come from in our lan­guage. And if the ori­gins of the word Ambas­sador is m Bap­tists, a Latin word which means ser­vant, or to serve ser­vant. So that’s where I’m draw­ing this Ambas­sador role is, is say­ing, one of the roles of a leader or a CEO, is that you need to serve the busi­ness or the staff or the cus­tomers. Now, this is impor­tant, because this is def­i­nite­ly not about doing oth­er peo­ple’s jobs. It’s very easy to say I will serve the sales man­ag­er by going in and med­dling around. That’s not what, that’s not it. No,

Kevin Lawrence 06:03

don’t go do his job for Okay, good to know. Okay,

Brad Giles 06:06

but how can a leader serve a sales man­ag­er? Or an oper­a­tions man­ag­er or a cus­tomer best? And that’s the, the gen­e­sis of the ambas­sador role. So it’s not PR. Okay, it’s not designed to cre­ate sales, nec­es­sar­i­ly. It’s about what is the cus­tomer needs? What is the employ­ee need? What is the our oth­er employ­ees need? Or stake­hold­ers? And in say­ing, so from that angle? How can I best serve those peo­ple? Now one of the oth­er? What’s the dif­fer­ence, though,

Kevin Lawrence 06:51

Bra­va was there assum­ing an ambas­sador and a man­ag­er, it sounds like a man­ag­er? And I know, that’s not what it is. But that’s what it kind of land­ed for me? Oh, it’s a good man­ag­er. What’s the distinction?

Brad Giles 07:02

Well, for me, the ambas­sador is one of five roles of a leader. Now a leader could be a man­ag­er, or it could be a VP, it could be a CEO, what­ev­er, okay. But this is one of the roles. So a man­ag­er is a man­ag­er, I mean, I’m going to go back to Peter Druck­er, he said that the job is in the job of an exec­u­tive is to be effec­tive, and the job of a man­ag­er is to be effi­cient, effi­cient. Yes. I love that. Yes. So that I come back to effec­tive, okay, being a ser­vant to the all of the peo­ple that need to, and then real­ly say­ing, Okay, so what is the best pos­si­ble way that I can serve our cus­tomers in my role with­out doing oth­er peo­ple’s jobs with­out going and sell­ing? Or with­out going and mak­ing or what­ev­er it is that you do? And that’s the ambas­sador role. So here’s an exam­ple. Okay, the only one, imag­ine that you are buy­ing a house? Yeah, you go in, and you’ve looked at the dis­play at home, and you’ve had plans drawn up, and you’ve got all of the design stuff, and every­thing is great, and you’ve got the con­tract. So you go in for a meet­ing with the sales man­ag­er. And the objec­tive of the meet­ing is to sign the con­tract, you’re check­ing it all out, and it’s all good, and you’re ready to sign. At that meet­ing, the CEO comes in and says, Hi, Kevin, I’m here. I’m not here to do the sales man­ager’s job. I’m just here to say, look, I want to let you know that we val­ue you as a cus­tomer, that what mat­ters to us is doing it right. So if you’ve got any major prob­lems, you should real­ly go to the per­son who’s appoint­ed to your build. But I want you to know, if you’ve got real­ly, real­ly major prob­lems, then I might step in. But what mat­ters to us is that we’re build­ing a real­ly long endur­ing home. That’s, that’s going to last you for gen­er­a­tions. And we want you to be real­ly, real­ly sat­is­fied again, I’m not here to do the sales man­ager’s job. And so Kevin, say thank you again, so much for buy­ing our house. Yeah, let me know. And then the CEO steps out. So that’s an exam­ple of the ambas­sador role. It’s not show­ing off. It’s not being show we got it.

Kevin Lawrence 09:44

And I’m just try­ing to fig­ure out so I got here the man­ag­er is effi­cient. The leader is effec­tive leader, the exec­u­tive as effec­tive as the ambas­sador is. I’m try­ing to get the word there because I see it in my head and I’m try­ing to land on the right We’re get­ting built, you got me think­ing with Druck­er’s quote. So if one is effi­cient, the oth­er is effec­tive. The ambas­sador is not engaged. It’s not empow­er­ing. I’m trav­el­ing with a word actu­al­ly is what I’m try­ing to do, Brad, and we can fig­ure that one out lat­er. But how would you describe the dif­fer­ence between a leader and Ambassador

Brad Giles 10:19

would­n’t because it’s if I’m going to com­plete­ly get all of what you’ve just said, and throw it up in the air and per­fect how it lands. Love it. If you’re going to be an effec­tive leader, you need to per­form five roles.

Kevin Lawrence 10:34

It’s one of the lead­ers roles, cor­rect one of it.

Brad Giles 10:39

Yeah. So you need to have account­abil­i­ty ambasador. So you need to have, you need to have a sys­tem of account­abil­i­ty. You don’t need to nec­es­sar­i­ly hold every­one account­able. But you need to have a sys­tem of account­abil­i­ty, you need to have a

Kevin Lawrence 10:52

strate­gic, one of the hats. It reminds me of Edward de Bono’s six think­ing hats. Yep, it’s one of the hats the leader wears is where they just show up and they’re seen, and they engage with impor­tant relationships.

Brad Giles 11:04

For the lis­ten­ers, I’m going to just close out those five. So yes, about a sys­tem of account­abil­i­ty, where every­one knows what they’ve got to do. And there are KPIs and all of that account­abil­i­ty stuff, the role of an ambas­sador, as we’re talk­ing about today, cul­ture, a con­scious cul­ture rather than one that hap­pens acci­den­tal­ly, a strat­e­gy that dif­fer­en­ti­ates you in the mar­ket, and then suc­ces­sion plan­ning, and not in the way that you instant­ly think about all the how are we going to pass this to the next gen­er­a­tion? This is how do we pro­tect that rev­enue stream? How do we pro­tect that key employ­ee? How do we pro­tect that? So So hav­ing back­up plans and things like vir­tu­al bench­es fall into that and suc­ces­sion plan­ning? So they’re the five roles of a leader? And one of those roles is an ambas­sador? Yep,

Kevin Lawrence 11:57

that makes crys­tal clear sense. So basi­cal­ly, it’s a role or a hat or a mode that that leader steps into, it’s not so much some­thing a man­ag­er would do, or they might do it in dif­fer­ent ways. But it’s them show­ing up as, as, as the, in many ways, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the over­all com­pa­ny, or the vision or what­ev­er the com­pa­ny is about, and heroes love it. Yeah, let’s, let’s dig into like, how does a CEO do this effec­tive­ly? Like, what does it take to be an effec­tive ambas­sador for your mind?

Brad Giles 12:33

Yeah, so like your book, your oxy­gen mask first, which is full of real­ly use­ful tools. That’s, that’s the same as my book. So my book is struc­tured with five roles. And there are five com­po­nents to each role. So we’re going to go through those five com­po­nents today. And the first one is, is the CEO has a sys­tem to build a pub­lic pro­file, such as an indus­try forums, indus­try, lead­er­ship, blog­ging, or speak­ing. Now, the first thing that we’re going to say is, but I don’t like that. That’s not who I am. I don’t want to put on a face. It’s not my cup of tea.

Brad Giles 13:24

it’s a com­mon, it’s a com­plete­ly legit­i­mate thing. So what I would say in reac­tion to that is, this is best prac­tice. How do we get best prac­tice to work? So that you’re deeply com­fort­able with it? And I say that with­in the con­text that imag­ine the orga­ni­za­tion, you know, like, you’re the head of the orga­ni­za­tion, with­out a pub­lic pro­file, it’s like, there is no face.

Kevin Lawrence 13:56

Yeah, and I’ve seen dif­fer­ent Every­one has their own way of doing it. Some peo­ple will go speak or Keynote at indus­try events. Some peo­ple will sit on a very impor­tant com­mit­tee for an indus­try asso­ci­a­tion. Yeah. Some peo­ple will write papers or reports, you know, I’ve got one, one amaz­ing CEO, who was an incred­i­ble ambas­sador, but in his own way,

Brad Giles 14:23

yes.

Kevin Lawrence 14:24

And his way of doing it would be to write let­ters. That’s how he would do it, he would show up to the most impor­tant, the crit­i­cal, crit­i­cal meet­ings, and those rela­tion­ships because, you know, they had lots of key rela­tion­ships, but, but his CEOs would do oth­er ones for their key rela­tion­ships. But for him, it was let­ters, yeah, let­ters, and actu­al­ly let­ters and lunch­es. That was the way that he did it, but he’s not the type that would speak at an event. He’s not the type that would shoot a video or any of those things, but through many things, and he was, he was very selec­tive in what he did. But he did those things.

Brad Giles 15:07

Yeah, so what I’m say­ing it his way, and it’s got to be in your way, it’s got to be authen­tic to who you are. But with­out some­thing like this again, you know, it’s like that we’ve got the head of the com­pa­ny. But with­out a face, we need to have a face of the com­pa­ny in some form. It does drive

Kevin Lawrence 15:25

me nuts on many of these com­pa­nies, that peo­ple who build these great com­pa­nies, and there’s not a name on the damn web­site or a face on any­thing. And it’s all this typ­i­cal cor­po­rate stuff. And in many ways, I,

Brad Giles 15:38

I don’t trust,

Kevin Lawrence 15:41

yet. Now I’ve got one oth­er very large suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny and the oth­er but one that was like that, where the CEO was the ambas­sador, but he was not the pub­lic ambas­sador, he would ever basi­cal­ly No, no, not very lit­tle cus­tomer fac­ing except for one piece of the busi­ness that he knew well, but with the team. And, and, and the employ­ees, he was like the best, he would just show up, he’d have a lit­tle chat, do a lit­tle teach­ing and, and he would remind peo­ple of the pur­pose and the strat­e­gy, and engage peo­ple. But and the fun­ni­est thing about this guy’s inter­est­ing is, when I first met the whole team, I’d nev­er met the CEO in per­son. Yeah, when they were all at a restau­rant and came to say, Hi, you would­n’t have been able to pick the CEO or the room, you would nev­er know he just blend­ed right in.

Brad Giles 16:30

And that’s fine. That’s his cup of tea. Exact­ly. And, and that’s what we’re say­ing here. Like, you don’t need to become a pro­fes­sion­al speak­er or any­thing like that. But remem­ber that the oppo­site of the CEO, pub­lic speak­er is a face­less orga­ni­za­tion. And it’s hard to trust.

Kevin Lawrence 16:49

Exact­ly.

Brad Giles 16:50

Per­fect. Let’s move on to num­ber two, the CEO attends all major cus­tomer con­tract sign­ings or prod­uct launch­es. Now this depends obvi­ous­ly you’re if you’re in a b2b or b2c envi­ron­ment, we acknowl­edge that straight off the cuff. But I gave the exam­ple of the home builder that that’s real­ly designed in here. So if you’ve got a major prod­uct launch, you should be attend­ing it. Yes. Sounds pret­ty sim­ple. But some peo­ple don’t. If you’ve got a new a major con­tract sign­ing, and you only send along your, you know, sales man­ag­er, maybe there’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty for you to go along. You think about the Queen of Eng­land, they roll her out with respect, they roll her out for spe­cial occa­sions. Yeah. And it makes the same, it’s the same.

Kevin Lawrence 17:41

And at the scale, you’re at spe­cial, maybe dif­fer­ent. Again, one of my CEOs, they had 100, they had they worked with prob­a­bly 10, no 15 major brands that they worked with as rep­re­sent­ing them. And they had like 250 loca­tions. He did­n’t go to every store open­ing. Yeah, oth­er but some­body else would play that role. But when the head of the brand would come to town, they would meet that per­son. So those crit­i­cal, and again, it’s at scale, those rela­tion­ships go Yeah, to a high­er lev­el. But the prin­ci­ple is the most impor­tant. And I remem­ber this one CEO, he was insane­ly busy with a mas­sive busi­ness. But he those key rela­tion­ships, he would fly to Italy for a two hour meet­ing and fly back. Yeah, lit­er­al­ly, because it was only as the ambas­sador and it was hard on him. And then he would go to New York for four hours some­times or a day. Because they had that mat­ters. That’s that it was because it was a busi­ness built on rela­tion­ships. Yeah. And if you don’t if and if you’re sign­ing an inter­na­tion­al treaty, and the Queen does­n’t come, it’s not real. Yeah. And then but it’s being very selec­tive on that. And just know­ing here’s the ones I need to be at. Here’s the ones I don’t and by the way, if you’re at every sin­gle one too often, it’s not spe­cial any­more, either.

Brad Giles 19:05

And let’s go back, this is serv­ing the peo­ple this Yes, this by doing fly­ing to Italy for a two hour meet­ing that is serv­ing those peo­ple in the best way that you pos­si­bly can for that indi­vid­ual. Absolute­ly. Yeah. So let’s move on to num­ber three. All employ­ees learn core val­ues and core pur­pose sto­ries month­ly from the CEO. So this is some­thing that we’ve spo­ken about quite a lot on the growth whis­pers Yeah, the just the impor­tance of sto­ries, how our brain is con­nect­ed to sto­ries. And if the CEO is the one that’s telling some of those sto­ries, why it mat­ters so much to the peo­ple in the orga­ni­za­tion, because peo­ple respect what you inspect.

Kevin Lawrence 19:55

Yeah, and again, I’m going back to some of these CEOs, anoth­er one. I’m think­ing of him, he would always talk about the pur­pose and divi­sion, right. And then he got to a cer­tain scale where then he would hand off to some of the exec­u­tives to talk about some spe­cif­ic core val­ue sto­ries. And that was a larg­er busi­ness, but that they’re the ones who need to keep breath­ing life into those things. Anoth­er one I’m work­ing with, they’re, you know, they’ve grown very well over the last 30 years. And the CEO just went through a project to update the core val­ues, and then they’re going to be the one that rolls it all. And I got an amaz­ing, amaz­ing video. Bund­aberg brew drinks down in your, your, your good coun­try, they’re, yeah, they’re there. Well, I worked with them and updat­ed their pur­pose and their val­ues. And I just saw the video they did to roll it out and rein­force it in their induc­tion bread in their induc­tion and onboard­ing, which I know that you’re very pas­sion­ate about, uh huh. But they got a video pro­duced of the CEO, talk­ing about the core val­ues and how it relates to the busi­ness and how impor­tant it is. So not only is he rolling it out, but they’ve done it as a video. So it’s per­ma­nent­ly part of every new per­son that joins the company

Brad Giles 21:08

invest­ed in one on 101. Right there. That’s awe­some. That’s awe­some. So let’s move on to num­ber four, all new employ­ees are wel­comed by the CEO, either phys­i­cal­ly or vir­tu­al­ly with­in their first week of employ­ment. Now, Hmm,

Kevin Lawrence 21:26

I love them, or vir­tu­al­ly, and nev­er thought about that, huh? That’s bril­liant. Now, obviously,

Brad Giles 21:34

it depends on your size. It clear­ly depends on your size, right? You’re gonna if you got

Kevin Lawrence 21:40

10,000 employ­ees, that’s not going to hap­pen unless it’s a more senior person.

Brad Giles 21:45

Okay, so let’s go, some­times to play at the extremes is to nor­mal­ize the mid­dle, right? So let’s look if you look 10,000 employ­ees, how many peo­ple joined in the last week? 100? Prob­a­bly, okay, so maybe, maybe

Kevin Lawrence 22:03

50 to 100? Yeah, probably.

Brad Giles 22:04

So the sto­ry or the exam­ple that I use around that in the book is, okay, so if I am doing a record­ed video or a live video for the week, as the CEO, I’m going to say, I want to espe­cial­ly wel­come the 25 peo­ple that are come and I’m going to say an Eng­lish name when I’m try­ing to find an Indi­an name. Sure­ly, Ash­er in India, I want to wel­come the 25 peo­ple who’ve come under Ash­er in India. We’ve got some great stuff going on in India, and I want to wel­come the oth­er 50 peo­ple who’ve just joined us in Con­necti­cut, that’s a real­ly excit­ing thing that we’re doing out there. Yeah, that’s tak­en me 10 sec­onds. And I’ve just got­ten through 75% of the new hires. So it means a lot. Now that might not be every­body’s cup of tea in that form s. And that’s okay. But there are oth­er things you can do in the ambas­sador role as well. But do you know what if we go from the extreme to the aver­age, like in mat­ters if it does, and

Kevin Lawrence 23:16

I love it, Brad, and there’s a part of my stom­ach that turns as you’re say­ing it to it, because I love the prin­ci­ple, and I know a bunch of the CEOs I work with, like they, they they they would be like, Are you crazy? I have no time as it is. And but it does mat­ter, Brad peo­ple that I agree that it mat­ters, and it’s find­ing a way to find look­ing for a way to try to do that. Yeah, because how peo­ple feel in that first short know, when they first arrive at a com­pa­ny, it’s a big deci­sion. So and I would sug­gest that, for exam­ple, you know, if I was going to talk to a CEO that had, you know, 500 employ­ees, you know, I would sug­gest that you know, and I do have a CEO that prob­a­bly wel­comes every sin­gle one, like lit­er­al­ly, it’s about that size, but it might my view would be is okay, great. Well, how can I for the top three or four lay­ers of the busi­ness? Right? The CEO, there should be a thresh­old for the CEO that they would do that. It’s def­i­nite­ly the top two lay­ers, prob­a­bly the top three lay­ers of their busi­ness, it should be some­thing that they in their EA work with, and they absolute­ly wel­come each one like no mat­ter what. And then beyond that, there just needs to you know, if they did it would be for some of them. I think it would be it would be excep­tion­al. And maybe I’m a lit­tle bit you know, I love the print­er. I just can’t see some of them doing it. So what would you say to those people?

Brad Giles 24:45

Well, there’s two things. Not every­one is those peo­ple if we think about how, if we think about some­one with a 50 or 100 or 500 per­son busi­ness, like it, this is best prac­tice. Because if you put your­self in the shoes of the new employ­ee, it’s like Mag­ic. It’s mag­ic it is, the high­er up the lad­der. If I’m if I’ve got shout­ed out amongst 25 oth­er new employ­ees in India, I’m like, Oh my god, these peo­ple actu­al­ly care.

Kevin Lawrence 25:14

Yeah, I’m abroad. And I worked in a com­pa­ny that had a few 1000 employ­ees when I first got into the media busi­ness. And the chair­man of the com­pa­ny, the founder was an amaz­ing, amaz­ing man. It was a com­pa­ny in Van­cou­ver called West­ern no so called, it was called Quick West­ern inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions. They own the hock­ey team, they owned a bunch of the TV sta­tions, radio sta­tions, a bunch of stuff. And I remem­ber I went to a par­ty at their house, because I was in head office. And I remem­ber I remem­ber this or this guy names it was, it was Frank Grif­fith senior. And I remem­ber and it was, it was a well known guy in Van­cou­ver any­ways, and it’s, it’s, it’s like prob­a­bly one of the nicest hous­es in Van­cou­ver. It’s out on its own. It’s not just water­front, it’s on its own lit­tle penin­su­la of land. Yeah, and it’s got a garage that will park a 40 foot boat. Like that you dri­ve up like a land garage. It was amaz­ing. But I remem­ber I showed up to his house, and I remem­ber the rest of my life. And then like, after this event, and he’s like, Hey, wel­come an Angel Angel chat. And I seen him in the office when I was a young kid. He’s like, hey, just take a walk around noon, check the place out. And he’s always telling me to want to wan­der around his man­sion on the water with a 40 foot boat garage. And, but he’s down to earth, but the way he con­nect­ed and Yeah, hi, and how to track and Well, that was like life chang­ing for me.

Brad Giles 26:39

Yeah. You know,

Kevin Lawrence 26:40

and, and that’s what’s what hap­pens when, when the big boss con­nects with peo­ple who are not, you know, senior peo­ple, it has a lot of it cre­ates a lot of val­ue. And it’s my brains twist­ing on how to get some of my clients to con­sid­er that

Brad Giles 26:57

role of the leader. Like, if you not lose, let’s go to the oppo­site end of the spec­trum to some of the great lead­ers that we know, right. So this might be an engi­neer­ing or tech­ni­cal type leader, who is very, very com­pe­tent, but thinks, I don’t real­ly like peo­ple. I don’t want to man­age peo­ple. I don’t want to be involved in peo­ple, what I’d actu­al­ly pre­fer to do is just work from home for­ev­er, and nev­er ever, ever get involved in peo­ple, not talk not even com­mu­ni­cate well, that that mind­set is not serv­ing the cus­tomers or the employ­ees, and it’s the ser­vant of the ambas­sador, look­ing for. So we even in that mind­set, we can find things to do. So let’s move on.

Kevin Lawrence 27:47

I’m just think­ing, I’m think­ing, I’m just think­ing. I’m just think­ing because we have three new peo­ple join­ing our team in the next cou­ple months. And we always do some things to wel­come them. And I think I can do a bet­ter job when we have a small core team. But I’m actu­al­ly think­ing even how I could and should do a bet­ter job. And this is good. I love this broad. Alright, let’s keep going.

Brad Giles 28:16

Let me just answer what you said before we keep going. The one of the objec­tives of these wel­com­ing is to acti­vate the pride of MBAs

Kevin Lawrence 28:25

total­ly. And, you know, peo­ple do it some­times by you know, send­ing peo­ple flow­ers on their first day of work or what­ev­er it hap­pens to be. And that’s a nice thing. It’s not the same as a per­son­al wel­come from the CEO.

Brad Giles 28:39

And it could take you 15 sec­onds in the way that I just demon­strat­ed, like, it does­n’t need to take hours out of your day. Just Any­way, let’s move on to num­ber five. Every quar­ter, the CEO launch­es the com­pa­ny plan and pri­or­i­ties to all employ­ees. So so we have a plan­ning process that we talk about often, which is gath­er quar­ter­ly, off site. If if you go off site with the lead­er­ship team, you deter­mine the plan, either for a day or two days, you deter­mine your plan for the next 90 days. What hap­pens next is an ambas­sado­r­i­al role. task, which is Yeah, we went off site and we believe it or not, we did­n’t just go and do wine­tast­ing. In actu­al fact, what we did is we deter­mined the pri­or­i­ties and the goals for the next quar­ter. How we’re going to exe­cute that and why that mat­ters. Yeah, and this is what it is and who’s account­able for it. Now that could be a 15 minute speech, or com­mu­niqué, but in an ambas­sado­r­i­al role, serv­ing peo­ple so that peo­ple know, not only the lead­er­ship team, but every­one else is on the same page and they know how much it mat­ters to Lat­er of the busi­ness, yep.

Kevin Lawrence 30:03

Yeah, that’s a no brain­er. And that’s pret­ty easy. And I’ve seen some peo­ple do that, again, when they’re dis­trib­uted where it’s, it’s done our short video, or a con­fer­ence call one of my clients in the US, called medics, Andrew Mor­ris, the CEO, and he’d be hap­py for me to men­tion them. And, you know, they launched thing by con­fer­ence calls all the time, right. And they got about 500 peo­ple all across the US and a few in Europe, too. And that’s how they do stuff and they com­mu­ni­cate. And he Andrew is the ambas­sador, he is, was you to keep talk­ing with his broth­er, Andrew, I think, Brad, I think about Andrew, because he does this stuff all the time. He shows up to impor­tant meet­ings, net­work­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty, build­ing rela­tion­ships, wel­com­ing peo­ple, cre­at­ing cul­ture events, launch­ing plans, you know, as exec­u­tives obvi­ous­ly helped to do it. But that’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s crit­i­cal. Because, you know, when you’re launch­ing those things, it gives impor­tance and mean­ing to them. Yeah, that’s the whole idea. It brings ener­gy to them. If the queen is com­ing to the open­ing of a new build­ing or facil­i­ty. It’s a frickin impor­tant build­ing or facil­i­ty. Right? And if Brad or Kevin show up, then even know who the heck we are. Right? It’s like, it does­n’t have that same mean­ing. And,

Brad Giles 31:17

and also, it does­n’t invoke the pride in Eng­land. Yes. That’s great. That’s right. It’s the pride. The pride is one of the net effects of the ambas­sador role.

Kevin Lawrence 31:29

So the ambas­sador role is about invok­ing pride. Acti­vat­ing pride, acti­vat­ing pride. So, so, so good, I got my word. I need a word with pride that starts with E. and then and then I’ll be hap­py. Yes, let’s

Brad Giles 31:49

say with a Cana­di­an x by

Kevin Lawrence 31:54

the Cana­di­an, Ital­ian Ital­ian accent, which I can’t do. Yeah, that’s that. So that’s, that’s a fair­ly nor­mal thing for CEOs to think about. And to do you know, I love this brand. It’s got me think­ing about and this is because this is your area of deep thought and mas­tery. And, you know, what, there have been a few CEOs over the years that I’ve talked to about, you know, doing they should do a month­ly video. And, and to share that one of our oth­er clients, you know, has been doing it and it’s been very effec­tive. You know, anoth­er CEO, I know from the past, he would do a week­ly let­ter to the team, every sin­gle week, he would send a let­ter to the fan of the

Brad Giles 32:35

big fan. Yeah,

Kevin Lawrence 32:37

yeah. Week­ly let­ter. So yes. So what are some, if we break this down into sim­ple things that peo­ple can acti­vate, attend­ing all key rela­tion­ship type meet­ings, whether it’s part­ners or sup­pli­ers, or cus­tomers, like real, real­ly impor­tant meet­ings or sign­ings? Some sort of reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the team, wel­com­ing peo­ple launch­ing plans, will be some oth­er sim­ple lit­tle things that peo­ple could do

Brad Giles 33:05

for num­ber five, launch­ing the plan and pri­or­i­ties. Do you mean? Which one? Do you mean? Or do you mean,

Kevin Lawrence 33:10

I’m kind of sum­ma­riz­ing a bunch of these ideas? I’m just play­ing out? Oh,

Brad Giles 33:13

yeah, I’m very pre­scrip­tive in those five things. So there are five things with­out spend­ing hours going into it. They are the head­lines. And then each of those has got a sto­ry and a tool around that in the book that helps a leader to go through and say this is how you can do it. But again, whilst it’s pre­scrip­tive, like it’s choose your own adven­ture, you’ve got to be able to do it in a way that is authen­tic to you,

Kevin Lawrence 33:46

here’s the prin­ci­ple of what you need to do and the exe­cu­tion con­sumed and the exe­cu­tion whether you show up in their office, whether you send them a video, whether you write and send them a let­ter, or what­ev­er that hap­pens to be, or Yeah, you orga­nize a par­ty, what­ev­er, what­ev­er, what­ev­er your style is. So let’s, let’s sum­ma­rize. So num­ber one, and the whole point is, is to remem­ber that there is an ambas­sador role and it’s part of your role. That’s the first thing and, and the idea of the ambas­sadors to evoke pride, and to bring that pride out in the orga­ni­za­tion, the pur­pose, the rela­tion­ship, what­ev­er it hap­pens to be so one CEO to build a sys­tem to have a pub­lic pro­file, whether it’s indus­try forums or lead­er­ship or blog­ging or speak­ing but to be a part of, of the indus­try, to attend­ing all major, you know, cus­tomer con­tract sign­ings or prod­uct launch­es, events that are kick­ing off com­mer­cial, impor­tant rela­tion­ships or activ­i­ties. Peo­ple hear about the core val­ues and pur­pose through the CEO ide­al­ly month­ly. new employ­ees are wel­comed by the CEO phys­i­cal­ly or vir­tu­al­ly, and I leave in the vir­tu­al that’s so easy to do, and we’ve got so com­fort­able that I thought that was a big take­away from me on the spread. And then and then the CEO launch­es the quar­ter­ly com­pa­ny plan and goals to all employ­ees again, vir­tu­al­ly. And some peo­ple would do road­shows to do that stuff. And they would go and see all the peo­ple or you know, doing that in per­son that is, this has been great. I love because this is your area of exper­tise. And it’s not area for a lot of time into that I’m learn­ing a lot of stuff on the show as well today. It’s a nice kicker.

Brad Giles 35:27

So the book again is made to thrive. The five roles to evolve beyond your lead­er­ship com­fort zone, by myself, they’re so inter­est­ing chat today, a bit of a dif­fer­ent one, per­haps, dig­ging into one of the chap­ters of one of our books. Yeah, I hope that you’ve enjoyed it. So thank you very much for lis­ten­ing. My name is Brad Giles. You can find me at evo­lu­tion part​ners​.com​.au and of course, Kevin Lawrence, you can find at Lawrence and co​.com. And of course, if you would like to you can see the oth­er ver­sion of this on YouTube as well as the pod­cast. So thanks for lis­ten­ing. Have a great week.