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[00:00:00] Welcome to the business for unicorns podcast, where we help gym owners unleash the full potential of their business. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym, get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.
Let’s begin. Well,
hello, dearest listeners, it is I, Mark, and my co partner, Pete. We’ve stolen the microphone away and we’ve made, we’ve cast away Michael Keillor. So we are running the Busy Unicorn podcast today. Wow. Pete, how are you doing today? Good.
I’m thinking about how much Michael is suffering after having been cast off to Hawaii, feeling good about ourselves. He’s [00:01:00] miserable in Hawaii. Meanwhile, we’re getting to have all the fun filming fitness business podcast that’ll show him. All right, team. We got a good one today. That is a little slice of life here from business unicorns coaching conversations we had.
We had something that I think you’re really going to dig, which is how do you get your employees to. actually tell you what they think, right? Because ultimately, if we have employees, they can be a very valuable resource. But It’s interesting because the skill of telling your boss what you think is something that basically nobody’s taught.
So we’re going to have some thoughts on that before we do it. I just want to say very briefly in the show notes, please go right to the show notes. I have a free webinar coming up with our dear friends at Kilo of Kilo and Jim lead machine. I’ll be chatting with CEO Kalita Connell on August 8th, Thursday, August 8th at 10 a.
She’s sharp. Can you hear my dog crying and suffering beneath me? Not at all. Is that Gizmo? Gizmo’s down there. Sad. Yeah. Listeners, we don’t even need to cut this out. Rosemary listeners can know that I’m a Cold hearted monster. My dog’s suffering. He’s fine. He’s just a little anxious. I can’t hear a word on the line or a bark.
Then we’re going to keep talking, everybody. I believe you want me to explain the impetus. Yeah, why don’t you share a little bit of context for how we find ourselves having this conversation. Yeah, one of the cool things that we do in Unicorn Society that I think is maybe a differentiator is we let gym owners use their one on one coaching time In the format of having their employees jump in to coaching calls sometimes.
And so I today had the pleasure of doing a quick call with a new director of [00:03:00] SNC at a gym in North America, and he was in general, you won’t find out who this is. The listener. somewhere in North America. I don’t want to bury anybody. No, he didn’t. He didn’t say anything offensive. In fact, his our call was immediately followed by a text to his employer saying, Yeah, good one.
Yeah. But he was interested in feedback on how he could, as a new employee, effectively manage up because he reports up to two people. In the operation that he’s jumped into and he’s young enough in his time with them that he wants to be able to share ideas without being perceived as pushy or unappreciative or anything like that.
He just has good ideas and he wants to hustle. And it got me to thinking that we talk a lot about how we can manage our employees, manage down and how to do so with, in good faith and with empathy, but be effective. But we don’t talk a lot about how those people can manage [00:04:00] us. And it seemed like a good conversation to have.
Yeah. Yeah, it’s very true because I think there are ways you can do this that are helpful. There are ways you can do it that are perilous. Uh, not unlike when you are giving feedback down. Sometimes that can be very helpful and well received. And certainly there’s always an element of threat because implicit in feedback is that what you’re doing right now is not as good as it could be.
Right. It’s always implicit in that. So there’s always a little bit of navigating this core tension, which is to say that we all want to be accepted and loved as whole, the complete and just the way we are. And we all want to grow. We all want to improve. We all want the opportunity of growing and developing.
And those, to human needs or intention. So feedback can really strike to the heart of a lot of people’s fear, particularly if there’s somebody that is sensitive to this. Pete, you don’t strike me as somebody who’s like particularly emotionally at the effect of feedback. Am I correct about that? Or is that a, am I pegging you wrong?[00:05:00]
It depends on the feedback like anybody else. But yeah, I find that the two places that I am emotionally disrupted by feedback are honestly actually my business. And probably my parenting, I would say they’re both my babies and I become a person. I don’t like when I get critical feedback about my operation, especially when I fundamentally disagree with it.
And I react. It’s funny. I go from being stoic and pretty even keel to being emotional and I can actually feel my blood kick up a couple notches when I get feedback about my business. So this is actually someplace where you probably didn’t. Tab me just right. But when I was giving this feedback today, I told this person, Hey, look, when I onboard a new coach, I typically sit down with them in their first week with us and I say, I want to be [00:06:00] a good manager to you.
And in my experience, there are two types of employees. There’s the one who likes direct. Somewhat aggressive feedback. Just tell me what I got to fix. Get right to it. I would call that like the football coach type feedback. And then there’s the one who likes the shit sandwich. So you’re doing this great, but you also did this thing stupid.
But by the way, you do this other thing great too. So let’s move forward. And I don’t think it’s so black and white that people are exactly one or the other, but I want to open a discussion where they ask themselves, who was my best manager in the past and what was it that I liked about them and how did they keep me accountable?
And once we have that conversation, it basically ends with me getting permission to manage them the way they want to be managed. But what I’m realizing is I could do the same thing with my team. Like I can say to somebody, Hey, what brings me to the edge of insanity? It’s when I get a text off hours saying, Hey, do you have some time to talk tomorrow?
Or [00:07:00] if somebody needs to talk to that, that is, I’ve been burned enough times. That’s like the I’m quitting or something’s on fire approach. And it gives me epic anxiety. And the last three or four times it has happened, it’s been an employee coming to me with an idea to build the business, not with notice that they were leaving the business.
Yeah. And I stood on it and I let it ruin a night of sleep like multiple times. And so if I had just said to them, Hey, do you know what gives me anxiety? It’s when employees do this, could you please do me a favor and just say, Hey, boss, I have an idea I’m excited about. Can we chat? Yes. Because. I’m not going to respond to the former saying, is this bad?
No, the answer is yeah. I’ll make time for you tomorrow. Let’s plan on X time. I guess I go to this like dark place when I get put in that position. And it’s so avoidable. If I just said, this thing makes me nervous. Can you not communicate that way? People would be [00:08:00] like, yeah, gotcha done. Yeah, it’s hilarious.
Amanda Wheeler Wheels, when she worked at MFF, would always be like, Hey, Mark, can we have a quick meeting to talk about something? It’s nothing bad. Don’t worry. She would always, even when sometimes I actually think sometimes it was tough stuff to hear, she would always say, Don’t worry. So she was so good at intuiting that Because that’s the other thing too.
I think all the stuff might be commonsensical actually, if you have very sophisticated emotional awareness, but in practice, most of us are not perfect at which why it’s good to develop little frameworks, I’d offer one other thing is that I love the idea that all of us performance training gyms are hiring 20 somethings with really sophisticated emotion.
Yeah. Yeah. Small, there’s a small chance that might not be happening, Pete. Yeah. So to help you out owners here, because again, the core thing we’re trying to solve is, okay, how do we. help people manage up more effectively. And I think it’s an interesting topic because it’s not a thing that I actually upon this conversation, I probably could be maybe more explicit about this, but [00:09:00] I do think there’s something to be said for making it safe to give feedback.
And ideally while you’re onboarding from day one, making it clear, your expectation is that you’re going to get candid feedback about opportunities. And because it can be a little bit confronting, the simple framework that I find. to be useful. And again, this is, it’s not any different actually than giving feedback to an employee.
It’s just a slightly different dynamic because frankly, it’s scary for the person managing up because usually what’s implicit in that is that they are not in the power position and the person they’re giving this potentially unhappy message to is responsible for their performance, their compensation, their continued employment, which is why virtually all leaders exist in some vacuum, right?
It’s also why the good leaders you zero in on the people you tell to straight. and then you do everything you can to stay close to those people because there’s so much safety and trust and relationship because you know that they’re going to tell you their perspective. Right? So one way I [00:10:00] think to make this simpler and also to operationalize this is I am a big fan of a quarterly check impulse, which members of the unicorn society have access to the particular, very simple system I use.
And there is a few things involved in it, but it’s a very quick meeting. And the thing that I’m sure to ask no more than every three months that will make it easier for people to share this information, which you can consider for, if you’re going to give some, you know, Unsolicited feedback is instead of what are all the things that I’m doing wrong and what are all the things about the business that suck?
That’s not fun to hear. That’s not fun to share. But you can get literally the same information by asking what else can I and the business do to support you even better to be even more effective at taking care of you. And I think that framing really matters. Now, if you’re somebody that prefers a football coach approach.
It might be lost on you why anybody would need it like that.[00:11:00]
the content of what you need to say, or that you should avoid saying a direct, maybe hard thing to say. I’m just saying that there’s usually a way to frame it. That’s directive. It’s focused on the behaviors that you would like to see, the things you’d like to see more of, as opposed to all the things that you don’t like, or that aren’t working well.
And again, it’s not to say that you can’t ever talk about those things, but if you’re listening to this and you are an employee and you have things that you feel like your boss doesn’t know. That’s the framework, right? I’ll give you one other. This is maybe we’ll see if this is disingenuous. One other linguistical thing that I’ve learned, and now you’re going to be ruined Pete, and actually any unicorn sided client, when you hear Keeler say this, he’ll always preface it by saying, you already know this, but I know you already know this, but, and there’s a saving face in that because what the person is saying is that this.
It’s obviously is in your blind spot. And then Keeler says this thing [00:12:00] that I was like unaware of. It’s very actually by the way I’m just kidding, that hasn’t happened recently. And to be honest, I don’t mean to suggest that Michael is being insincere by any means, but I do think there’s something for the saving face of assuming the person, because to be honest, most of the time that’s the case.
Most people, it’s not a situation where it’s a complete out of nowhere blind spot where they’d have no idea we were talking about it at all. That’s maybe handled a little bit differently, but in a situation where. One of the challenging things for employees is told your boss, but you didn’t do the best job of telling them and they’re not doing a great job of really listening.
And now you have to escalate it the way we’ve talked before about escalating with an employee. And that can be hard because for a lot of employees, My experience is it’s very easy to throw up your hands and be like, Oh, my boss doesn’t get it. But you only told your boss once and you half whispered it and you weren’t even really very direct about it.
So your boss didn’t even get it. And then six months later, maybe you have a blow up at them, which I don’t think Most employees do. I think [00:13:00] I feel like I’ve had maybe a disproportionate number of employees get really bad at me and tell me off, which I assume Michael always very nice. It’s like, it’s because you’re friendly because they know that they can.
It’s like, thank you for the compliment. So those are just a couple of frameworks. I would encourage you to consider for framing your managing up in a way that feels like a little bit less scary. Cause it, yeah, it’s always going to feel weird to tell the person in charge of your performance and your pay.
If it, particularly if it’s critical feedback or there’s something you think they’re dropping the ball on. Yeah. I’ll build off of that and say that we, you and I, and the fellow gym owners who employ people who are listening are probably being managed up more often than we realize and doing what you said, which is like dropping the ball on hearing it sometimes.
So a routine that you could build into that quarterly check in or a, I wouldn’t do this every week, but say once a month, quarter or semi annually. If you had an all hands meeting where you said, Hey, we’re going to do a quick activity, pull the sheet up. First thing I want you [00:14:00] to write down is one adjustment that we’ve made since you’ve been here, be it to our systems or our approach that you think has been particularly helpful or well received and then write down one thing that you think is lacking or system or approach that we need to reconsider.
in the near future. And that’s where I would, on top of that, I’d say, and I’d imagine that some of you in the room have tried to put the ladder on my radar more than once and feel like I didn’t hear it. And I would love for you to repeat it to me in this context, because I need to be better at that.
That’s brilliant. And it’s as safe as it gets. Yeah. It’s so brilliant because it’s, it is so hard as the leader, right? Because there’s an interesting dynamic, right? Where just as it’s very true, the leader often doesn’t properly appreciate. The challenges of employees, it’s very frustrating for them. It is sometimes true that employees listening, you don’t always actually appreciate how much is going on in your boss’s head because if they’re a middle manager, that’s very challenging because they’re dealing [00:15:00] with their boss and then dealing down there in the middle of a challenging sandwich times.
If you’re the actual owner, they’ve got a lot of other stresses and things going on in their brain, which means, yeah, sometimes when you tell them, they just don’t get it. And you might have to tell them. more than once. And listen, I do think it’s probably worth noting here. While this is an amazing conversation, it helping.
employees manage up better. I think it’s incumbent upon the boss, the not necessarily the owner, but whoever the manager is, the person in the power position of the relationship to be solicitous of feedback, to keep asking for feedback, to do everything to make it safe that when you tell me a difficult thing, I’m going to breathe through it and I’m not going to have a, Volcanic reaction that trains the person.
I shouldn’t tell them again because now I’ve proven it is very frightening and threatening. And then furthermore, I said to people are like jokingly about people yelling me over the years. There is something to be said for not making people tied up with a bow, but I listen, I’d prefer the feedback delivered in a thoughtful way.
And right now I really want to [00:16:00] reflect. I have some so gifted, actually I can tell a quick story about some, I have some gifted people I’m working with right now on the feedback front. But in general, not all employees are going to be great at. So for leaders, for bosses listening, you need to make it safe that sometimes like they’re not going to say it in the most thoughtful way.
Sometimes they are going to be frustrated. Sometimes they are going to be heated. And the more that you can make that safe, the stronger your relationship can become on the other side of it. And the less likely they are to get things built up and the more likely they are to be forthcoming a little bit sooner.
But yeah, there are people out there. I’m thinking of one example. It’s funny. I had a meeting before this for the alloy that I have in New Jersey. And Alana, who is a, actually had worked as an MFF. Who’s the fitness director in that business right now. She’s just so gifted, so emotionally intelligent. And this is the thing you can never, to your point, Pete, you can’t realistically ask for this to happen almost ever because she’s so good at it.
And the content, the feedback isn’t even. Basically, the gist of it was that it’s really understandable that you and Greg have a lot of urgency sometimes, and it can sometimes [00:17:00] feel like excitement, and it can sometimes feel a little stressful to those of us that you’re asking to do the things. And it’s, I can’t do it justice, but it was in the most, no big deal.
Here’s the thing you need to know. You probably want to stop doing it that way. That was just so heartening. And then of course, once that’s done is I’m going to send her a specific positive feedback message. about her feedback because I feel even more sense of trust with her because this is maybe, unless you have something else to add here, P, I’ll give you one final little nugget specifically for the employees that are looking to manage up better.
If you have a cool boss. and you get good at being the person they know they can go to. I’ll say this again, that you can share things that they maybe weren’t as aware of or help them understand something maybe a bigger deal than they thought because they trust you’re coming in with a lot of care for them.
They trust that you’re coming in with the attitude. This is a fixable thing that you as an intelligent person to be able to fix. It’s clearly coming out of place of here. Let me serve and share this thing that I think We can [00:18:00] totally fix and we’ll make this place even better to work at. Wow, boy. The other side of that is a really beautiful relationship.
And I know you’re not a Machiavellian that it’s just about how much money can I make? But whoa, boy, that has real economic value to a good leader. I can’t guarantee. They’re all good leaders. I know they’re not. There’s a lot of leaders out there that don’t want to hear the feedback that even more infuriatingly talk a good game, but in practice don’t take it well.
But to the extent that you, you have that kind of leader and you get a depth of sharing this feedback, I think it’s going to just do wonders for your career longevity and for the economic opportunities you have in that business. masterclass clinic on how to manage up there. So yeah, I think she’s had a lot of experience.
Yeah. She’s a special one. I should send her this podcast afterwards and be like, here, this is me talking nicely about you in public, but I’ll also talk to her privately about how great she is. All right, Pete. Well, let’s, uh, we’re going to keep this tight today, but yeah. Any, any other final things? One last tip I’ll leave you with.
Yeah. Yeah. I’d [00:19:00] say if you’ve got more than a very small team and you feel like people just aren’t delivering the feedback at a pace or format you’d like, there’s always safety in numbers, and if you can give them the opportunity to deliver that feedback anonymously. I don’t think that’s a terrible thing.
If you could discuss feedback submitted anonymously as a group. People are a lot more comfortable getting into it. Yes. And not sitting one on one behind closed doors with that manager. Yep. Yep. 100%. All right, friends. Well, thanks as always for listening to us here on the business unicorns podcast. If you have not done so yet, because you were too enraptured in mine and Pete’s malicious voices, go down to the show notes, kilo webinar.
Again, that is happening on Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday, August 8th at 10 a. m. EST there will be recording available after. So if you don’t get a chance to watch it live, check it out then. Thank you much. So as always, and we’ll see you or you, I guess we’ll be in your ear holes again. Soon. See you Mark.
This is what happens. [00:20:00] We don’t have Keeler here. We’re good. We’re good. We did great. You did great.
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