How to Build a High Integrity Team with Ben Pickard

Speaker: [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3, 4. Welcome to the Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the business for Unicorns team 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.[00:00:30]
Yeah. Hello my friend. I’m curious, have you ever wanted Fisher or me to spend a full day personally coaching you one-on-one about your business? Well, we’d actually do that. They’re called mentorship days, and we spent a couple hours reviewing everything we could possibly know about your business. We took a take a look at like every quantitative and qualitative marker that represents kind of your business health and we [00:01:00] thorough, thorough, review all of that.
We look through your personal and professional and financial goals, then we help. You make a plan to get there, and there’s only really a hit one hitch. Actually, there’s kind of two hitches. One is that we have very limited availability. This takes us a lot of hours. We spend hours reviewing your business.
Then we spend hours on a call with you. It’s really a lot of work, but we’d love doing it. So the first hitch is there’s not a lot of availability. The second hitch is that it’s not cheap. But if you like the idea of working with us one-on-one, this is your chance to get basically a [00:01:30] year of coaching in a day.
It’s a real deep dive. So what I want you to do, if you’re interested at all, just for a conversation about it, click the link down below in our show notes. Go over to our Instagram page and DM us the word mentorship, and we’ll get back to you with all the details about what it costs and how it works, and see if we’re the right fit.
So go over to our Instagram, DM us and mentorship, and hopefully we’ll be talking soon. Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business Unicorns podcast. I’m back today with today with Ben. [00:02:00] What’s up my friend?
Speaker 2: Hello, how are you?
Speaker: Good. I feel like it’s been a hot minute since we’ve had, we’ve recorded a podcast together.
I’m not sure what our listeners have been hearing in terms of you and I in their ears, but it feels like it’s been a minute since we’ve had a recording together.
Speaker 2: I think we’ve been slacking. We did have the retreat and it was amazing.
Speaker: Yes, that’s
Speaker 2: true. So we, it was really a matter of prioritization, but.
Speaker: We are recording this, what, two weeks after our unicorn study at Retreat in Atlanta, which we’ve probably talked about on the podcast already, but it was fantastic and it was great, and that’s maybe part of the reason we haven’t. [00:02:30] But generally speaking, how’s life Tell our listeners what you’ve been up to.
Speaker 2: Life is good. What’s, what have I been up to? I’ve been expanding my theatrical horizons, which will make Michael very happy with me. I’m going to see plays. I’m going to see the Book of Mormon in two days by the South Park. Guys
Speaker: love it.
Speaker 2: We’re also going to see the Hobbit.
Speaker: Ooh, on stage, huh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we went to go, as everyone knows, I think we went to go see the Stranger Things Broadway show in December.
So that’s even three things in a 12 month [00:03:00] period is like
Speaker: in a calendar year. That’s huge for you.
Speaker 2: That is a PR by Miles. I’m excited about that.
Speaker: That is an average week for me.
Speaker 2: My win today in our meeting was that I’m gonna a future show and Michael saw three yesterday probably.
Speaker: Yeah. That’s amazing. Good for you. What’s this new, what this new culture side of Ben learning?
Speaker 2: Uh, so my relationship with plays was like, I went to go see Shakespeare when I was like 14 with my parents in Oh
Speaker: [00:03:30] sure.
Speaker 2: Stratford Ontario, which is like a. Stratford has something to do with Shakespeare, I couldn’t tell you, but somebody probably could who knows more about it than me. And my experience, was it as boring as fuck?
Speaker: Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 2: I had no, I was being Dr. I would rather just do nothing than go to this thing. So I’m like, oh, it’s like boring old people doing a less good version of a movie.
Sure. Right now I don’t offending everyone who listens to Broadly. Yeah. It’s
Speaker: quite a review. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I’ve never seen it, and then it turns out that’s not the case at all. It’s a [00:04:00] completely different medium. You feel so much more like it’s there with the people and it’s not lost on me that. That version of the, the performance that you saw that night is the only time that version actually happens because something inevitably is a little bit different or goes a little bit wrong.
Yeah. Or whatever. And they have to roll with the punches. Like a chair fell in Stranger things. Yeah. Was that part of the thing? I don’t know, but it was great. No?
Speaker: Yeah. That’s amazing.
Speaker 2: And it’s been a cool way to just like experience different takes on it. ’cause I’ve also been reading a ton of books as I think people know it because I won’t shut up about my e-reader.[00:04:30]
One of the, a friend mentioned this to me before, so when you watch a really good show, a really good movie, it’s often because it had a really good budget. Mm-hmm. Like I really love the show, the Expanse on Space. It’s a sci-fi series, but like, I wish that had a bit bigger budget. ’cause there’s some really shit CGI in there that like detracts you from the experience.
The nice part of a book is there is no cgi I if it’s like picture a pink elephant, you can do that. Picture it spinning, it’s all in your head. Yeah. And there’s gonna be a limit to what [00:05:00] shows and movies can deliver based on what are people willing to pay for that makes money. And I get, Broadway does the same thing, but you get different takes on it.
So if you read something and then go to a show, and then go to a movie like Harry Potter’s on all three of those mediums, and they’re all very different stories.
Speaker: For sure. You’re right. There’s something about the ephemeral nature of live theater that is happens that one time in the moment and it’s, and then it’s gone.
That’s really exciting. As opposed to like movies and books that you can return to and return to. So, good. I’m glad you’re switching it up. I think it’s, I think all of us [00:05:30] should explore different genres of like entertainment and art, and that’s what they’re there for. They enrich our lives in meaningful ways and we’ve moved away from that as a culture at least.
Here in the US and Canada, we don’t prioritize our art relationship to arts the same way that we used to many years ago at this point. But anyway, I just, we can do a whole podcast about that and maybe someday we should talk about the importance of having art in your life. But I think we’ll leave it there for today.
Thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing. Okay. Um, today actually, we wanna talk about [00:06:00] another topic, which I know is near and dear to your heart. And lemme just tee this up this way. So today we’re gonna talk about integrity. And there’s two reasons I wanted to talk about this. One is we talk to a lot of gym owners every day.
I have had now thousands and thousands of hours of conversation with gym owners, and one of the common threads I see universally over the years is there’s a lot of folks that I talk to, and this is just not. Gym owners, so even humans in my life who I would describe as really just not in, in alignment with their own [00:06:30] sense of integrity, that they’re not in integrity with themselves.
That, and the my shorthand for that is they don’t always do what they say they’re going to do. And I’m in this book too. I’m not a hundred, I’m not perfect. None of us are, but we know that, and there’s a lot of research on this topic that when you consistently don’t do what you say you’re going to do, you lose a little bit of.
Power. You lose a little bit of self-respect, you lose, lose a little bit of belief in yourself, you lose a little bit. I could go on and on, but there’s a cost that [00:07:00] comes with not doing what you said you’re going to do. And so I want to talk about it on the podcast today because one, I think that’s a thing many of you will resonate with.
And I know entrepreneurship and running your own business really require someone who has a strong level of integrity and inspires that integrity in others, right? And. The second reason I wanted to have this conversation today is ’cause Ben, you’re one of the best at this. I recognize it from when you were a unicorn signing member.
It’s one of the reasons I asked you to work with us, and I know you’ve thought about this topic a lot, approach it a lot in different rare areas. And I [00:07:30] hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but you’re, I know you’re also not perfect at it, but the fact that you hold yourself to a very high standard of, like I, if Ben says he’s gonna do.
He’s gonna do it. And he also really expects the people around him to show up with that same level of integrity. And I love it so much. I know it’s been so useful for me and challenging, right, to really show up and do what I say I’m gonna do. And so I wanted to have this conversation specifically with you because I think you’re unusually good at it, and I know you care about it.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker: Now, [00:08:00] so let’s just start with, this might be a tough question to answer, but I’m gonna ask it anyway. Can you think about when the idea of being someone that has integrity like first came into your life, like when did you recognize this is a thing that mattered to you as a person?
Speaker 2: Oh, shit.
That’s a good question. I don’t know. We should have prepped a little bit better.
Speaker: No, that’s what this conversation’s all about. Right? You don’t have to pinpoint this exact moment, but I know for example, not only have you been a gym owner for a while, but you’ve done some men’s work in like a men’s group that you [00:08:30] often have been, you have some leadership in your father and a husband, and these are all domains in which integrity really matters.
And so I’m curious, like when it just became part of your consciousness that this is like something you wanna.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I suspect it was, I don’t believe clearly, there wasn’t like a light bulb moment where it’s like, integrity is the thing I now strive for, and it was like a light switch.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I suspect it was a combination of having Liam when we were super young.
For anyone [00:09:00] who doesn’t know, I don’t have any new listeners we have recently, but my wife was 21, I was 22, and I was my third year of a five year undergraduate degree. Not planned.
Speaker: Yeah,
Speaker 2: but there was this, I did have a light switch moment there where I was like, the conversation I had with myself was, I can either probably make assistant manager at McDonald’s, or I can get my shit together.
I can graduate university and I can see what I can really do. So that was a very pivotal moment that like, I wouldn’t say I was framing as integrity, but like I had to do the [00:09:30] important follow through matter. You don’t get, you don’t get points in university for intention. You don’t get jobs based on intention, like it’s often outcome driven.
Combined with when me and my wife got back together. Also a long story I’ll spare for this podcast. She had a moment where she was like, if we’re doing this, we’re fucking doing this. Yeah. Means I’m getting a ring. We’re not because we were on again off again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You can imagine there was some feelings around having a child much younger than you were prepared for
Speaker: sure.
Speaker 2: So that was like cool. [00:10:00] We’re doing this, that’s the thing. And then layer all of that on top of owning your own business. Like if you say you’re gonna do something for a client, you say their program’s gonna be done before they go on vacation, and it’s not like that, and that person quits. That’s understandable.
If you have a team member that you say you’re gonna do a thing for and you don’t like, they’re gonna fucking quit. If you are gonna do a thing to make your business better and you don’t do it, you’re not gonna get the results of doing it like it just. Yeah. Like we are just not,
Speaker: I think that, I think that’s a great way of thinking about it.
[00:10:30] I think the, as you’re talking, the words that resonate with me is get credit for halfway in a lot of things in life, right? In relationships, in school, running your own business, like you don’t pass, you don’t graduate, you don’t get the outcomes. You, if you don’t get the outcomes, it doesn’t count. And being an entrepreneur, you have to be, you have to have a sense of self-efficacy.
You have to be self-motivated about a lot of ways. And that means like you have to follow through. And if you don’t. Things just won’t happen, right? Your business will not grow, will not progress [00:11:00] if you don’t do the things you know you are meant to do. And deciding what to do is a whole nother topic we’ll put aside for another day, right?
Yes. But once you are clear that this is the path that is, is required or necessary, or that you want to take, actually putting one front in front of the other and doing it when you say you’re gonna do it is such an important skill. How, you know? Talk about the trajectory of how you’ve gotten better at this over time.
Go all the way back from, oh shit, I need to get my shit together to now I think of you as someone who really does [00:11:30] center like this sense of integrity in so much of what you do.
Speaker 2: I think I’ve always been relatively outcome driven.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like I’ve made decisions that if I had a time machine, I might not. I might undo.
I wanna be clear. I didn’t kill anybody or anything, do listeners.
Speaker: That’s exactly what I thought. I was like, how many people do you think he murdered?
Speaker 2: It wasn’t like catastrophic. There’s just things where I’m like, but it got me to the outcome. But it might not have been the most value driven way of doing those
Speaker: things.
Sure. You have some regrets. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Some of it is just like a [00:12:00] shift in belief. A good example is it’s not uncommon for he people to say the phrase Actions speak louder than words. Sure. I genuinely do not disagree and possibly think that phrase causes harm. So I have done a course which is called On the Presence.
It’s local to where I live, which is just coincidence, where the entire course is about the power of your words that you like. If truly nobody believed the word, and everyone only believed the action, nothing would [00:12:30] ever get done because we’d all just be proving to each other that we’re not a bunch of fucking liars.
Speaker: Yeah,
Speaker 2: we have to be the type of people that if we say we’re going to do a thing, we might not always succeed. Like you can’t say, I’m going to win this sports game today. Like sometimes things are outta your control, but you’re gonna do the things that would lead to a greater likelihood of that outcome happening.
Because otherwise, like how do we coexist? Like trust?
Speaker: It’s essential for trust. It’s essential for collaboration. It’s essential for most relationships.
Speaker 2: I [00:13:00] can’t,
Speaker: that are often built on trust. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don’t like, I don’t think business would work. I don’t what that would mean. Our clients don’t pay us for a year until they get fat loss results.
We don’t ever hire, we don’t pay our employees until they prove that they can knock the job out of the park. Like the It wouldn’t work.
Speaker: Yeah. Just go, sorry. Keep going. Was there more you wanted to say?
Speaker 2: So it’s, it is really, I think I’ve just, I’ve tried to rebuild my own belief system is the best way to, it sounds weird, but I think that’s what I tried to do is I’ve just put myself in situations where what I believe to be better [00:13:30] beliefs can be reinforced and make tend to till it becomes true for me.
Speaker: That makes sense. So now that you’re at this, this stage of life where you’re consciously leading with integrity in your life as a father and a husband, a business owner or a coach, right? You’re consciously, that matters to you. It’s a value you would hold. I’m curious about the time. What happens now?
What’s the cost, when it gets broken, when you don’t follow through? How do you experience that these days? I know it’s probably pretty rare, but I’m sure it happens from time to
Speaker 2: time. No, I’ve, [00:14:00] I’ve,
Speaker: yeah.
Speaker 2: There was two things I didn’t do that we talked about in our meeting today that I said I was gonna do last week, and they didn’t get done.
I tried to own it. I hope that’s how it came across to you as I was trying to own it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The goal isn’t to be perfect with it. The goal is that when you’re out of integrity, you try to do what you can to get back into it.
Speaker: Yeah. And that’s not, and you used the phrase a second ago, what you owned it.
It.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Own owning it. Creative consequences. And men’s group, we call it a cleanup, and the idea is that you would give yourself escalating [00:14:30] creative consequences to feel whole again. So if you can think of integrity as if the, you’d say the structural integrity of this building isn’t sound. Maybe it’s got cracks or it’s missing a piece, or whatever.
Picture it as like a circle. Mm-hmm. Maybe there’s a piece missing when it’s out of integrity. You don’t get back in integrity by putting your head in the sand, you get back in integrity by putting the piece back in the hole. So it’s whole again. So in men’s group we’ll do things like cold showers. I don’t know how wacky you want me to get on this podcast.
There’ll be other activities
Speaker: I have. We have no limits on this podcast as
Speaker 2: like one, [00:15:00] one of the most, I was on a men’s team, so men’s team is half leadership, half group therapy is the best way to put it. And we meet in the woods every two weeks and essentially yell at trees and feel better.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And our team was just fucking, we were just real shit at getting done the things we said we were gonna do.
And we took this team approach to integrity that if one dude on the team, there was 10 of us, I think. Didn’t get the thing done. Everyone on the team had to go put their balls in the river. And this is winter time in Canada.
Speaker: Yikes.
Speaker 2: Guess who got all the shit done?
Speaker: Yeah. Everybody’s
Speaker 2: getting
Speaker: the
Speaker 2: shit done. [00:15:30] No balls
Speaker: when that day.
Speaker 2: So we know people will move away from pain faster than they’ll move towards pleasure. Creative consequences only go so far. It does have to be a core value that when I’m out of integrity, like I feel a, it’s like a pit in my stomach more than anything. Yeah. And I still have to do stuff to get it back.
Yeah, if you break an egg and you say, sorry, it doesn’t fix the egg. No. It takes actions to, you need 12 eggs. Again, someone needs to go, the person who broke the egg needs to go replace the egg. That’s what getting back in integrity looks like.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it’s a great way of [00:16:00] thinking about it, right? That integrity is you being aligned with yourself and, and in short, kind of feeling, whole feeling like I’m doing what I said I was gonna do and, and I’m aligned with this, my own sense of self.
And I like your idea of like when that’s out of alignment, when you’re missing a piece, when there’s a gap there. All of us, I think, feel it on some level. Some of us think are more aware of what’s going on than others, but the goal is not to bear our head in the sand or avoid or pretend like it’s not happening or pretend like we don’t feel crappy about it.
It’s actually to run toward [00:16:30] that. Right? Run toward that and try and fix it. Try and put on a gab and it might start with a bandaid. You might start with some scaffolding to use your building analogy, right? You might start with a fresh coat of paint. Whatever you can have the capacity to do. You gotta own the fact that this is crumbling.
This is not whole, right? It’s not working. And I need to find some way to get whole again by, by building more evidence that I am capable of doing what I say I’m going to do. I am a person of integrity and I need to show that through my words and my actions. And I think the more you can rebuild that sense of [00:17:00] self, the more whole you can.
Feel again, but I think And tell me what have, this is your experience. I think a lot of folks that I talk to, especially in coaching conversations, and this has been true for me, sometimes they get to a point where they’ve shopped so many balls. Right where they’ve totally missed the mark on so many things that they told people they were going to do or they told themselves they were going to do that there’s a give up moment.
There’s like, what the hell at this point? Like, why even try to be in line with myself? And that we start to normalize the [00:17:30] idea that it’s okay to just not show up on time for that thing, to not meet that deadline, to not whatever the case may be. And yeah. What did you say to those folks who feel like they’ve gotten so far away from.
That level of integrity of really doing what I say I’m gonna do a hundred percent of the time, how do they get back?
Speaker 2: It sounds so cheesy, but it’s the same way as everybody else. You just start with baby steps and rebuild it. I wish I could, again, I’m still like, I’m still exploring [00:18:00] this framework for myself, so I don’t wanna sit here and pretend like I’ve got it figured out.
I,
Speaker: no,
Speaker 2: I screw stuff up all the time. I think the only, the main difference is that I’d like to believe more often than not, or almost all the time, take ownership of my mistakes. Sure that I won’t try to, sometimes I have reasons or I’ll wanna share my experience, but I think it’s very rare that I pass blame to anybody else.
Sure. That if you have probably experienced that, you’d know better than me.
Speaker: No, I agree. I would like to think that we share that. I think we, there’s plenty of times that we have of you who don’t know. We have a weekly one-on-one for our work together. There’s plenty of times where I come to the conversation like, you know what?[00:18:30]
I did not do that thing and I totally fucked up. I’m sorry. I will fix it. Here’s why. Here’s the consequence, here’s the reason why it happened, and maybe I can help me think through what got in the way. But we do both do a pretty good job of owning it when we fuck something up and we didn’t do what we said we’re going to do.
It’s important to know the context and talk through it. That’s not, I don’t, I wouldn’t call that excuse making ’cause as long as you own it, then we can together be part of the solution. But it’s people who pretend like it’s not an issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. That’s the people who are excuse making [00:19:00] for me.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
So for the people who are, maybe their word has lost its value in certain way of putting it. ’cause they haven’t, they have so many things they haven’t done. I wish I could sit here and give a hack and I honestly, my experience has been, it’s intentional practice and it’s baby steps. It’s, I went to the dentist yesterday for the first time in 15 years.
I was this close to canceling. I have a lot of anxiety with dental work. I, I don’t know why. Probably ’cause I put fucking power tools in your mouth. Maybe we should talk about that. [00:19:30] But like I was this close to canceling and the number one reason that I went is because I told the person on the phone that I would be there at five 30 from a frigging appointment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I worked out on Monday because I told men’s group that I was going to do the thing for this thing. We’re doing this tour.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker 2: And it is just like saying that you’re going to do a thing and then following through on that thing and then having that self accomplishment. I think the other side of that coin is like treating your word closer to gold and making it a little bit more valuable, which means you don’t agree to shit that you don’t actually agree [00:20:00] to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Point often you say yes to stuff is a way to maybe end the conversation or move to the next step, and it was actually something we had never had any intention of doing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I’ve never had a situation where I’m like, look. I’m just really not enrolled in that idea. Can we talk about it rather than just being like Meekly?
Yeah, I guess I’ll do that thing. Even though you’re never gonna do it, the person you’re talking to knows you’re not gonna do it. You can read people, you can tell when they’re lying to you.
Speaker: Yeah. So I That’s a really great point, right? You’ll be more aligned. You’ll, your word will [00:20:30] be more valuable. You’ll be more aligned with your own insensitive integrity when you don’t commit to things you’re not really committed to.
Yeah. I think that’s, that’s the, like the initial lie that kicks things off, right? Saying yes to something that’s really a fuck no. Of course you’re gonna be out of a line with yourself ’cause you’ve already stepped out. So I’m making that commitment. I think that’s important. Lemme ask one more. Question can, oh yeah.
Can
Speaker 2: I share one thing on commitments, because that brought something up for me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in men’s work, we have the framework of commitments and agreements, and a commitment is, I’m [00:21:00] sure there’s a, I’m sure we stole this from somewhere. We didn’t invent it. Michael probably knows as he smiles at me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The commitment is the thing that you are actually committed to, so you can be like, I’m committed to my health.
And that shows up by the agreement support commitment, such as I have an agreement to work out three days a week with myself or with my trainer. I have an agreement to whatever that I’m going to eat my vegetables, I’m going to go to sleep on time. Often these are agreements with ourselves, but we have these agreements that support commitments.
And I think where some people go wrong [00:21:30] is they make agreements to things. They’re not committed to your point. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There’s things I don’t do just ’cause I’m not into that thing. I’m not gonna agree to do that thing. Yes. Don’t try to hold that over me. I want it to be, and I wanna be clear, this doesn’t mean you never agree to anything.
It just means you’re intentional and you give it a little bit of thought.
Speaker: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. This is something that, you know, I, I wish I had him on the podcast. He would totally agree to this, but that my husband, Andrew, would totally say that it’s something we had to get used to in our later relationship, because for one, I’m a little older than him, so I, I know more about what I do and don’t wanna do [00:22:00] in life maybe than he did when we first met.
And he was at first really probably a little annoyed and taken aback by the fact that I would say no to a lot of stuff. That I didn’t want to do, but I was like, I don’t wanna say yes to something if I’m really not a hundred percent into it, if I’m not into it, and it’s not gonna be fun for me. Like it’s just a no.
From small things, like I don’t like playing board games, so I won’t say yes to playing board games, even though it’s a simple thing I could say yes to and just do. But I actually fucking hate board games, [00:22:30] so I just say no. I just say, no thank you. It’s not fun. I’ll make you snacks while you play and, but I’m not gonna do it all the way to bigger things like.
Trips I wouldn’t want to take, like it’s just if it’s, if I’m not really committed, I don’t wanna agree to spending time on it. And I think that’s a really great point. I know we have, we’re short on time, but let me just ask one more question then we can wrap things up, which is, I also know that we’ve both tried to cultivate people around us who share this value.
We’ve tried to cultivate a team that we work with. Friends, [00:23:00] family who are also people who are, who their word has value and they show up and, and I’ll just, I could ask a lot of questions about this, but I’ll just ask one, how do you, let’s start with just talking about the, our gyms, make it simple. Bring it back to our listeners here in your gym.
If you want to build a team of people who have high integrity and you wanna have a high integrity team of people who do what they say they’re gonna do, how do you think about finding those people in the hiring process? Any thoughts about how do you vet for integrity?
Speaker 2: Cool. That’s a great [00:23:30] question. Part of it is through like micro hoops that you make them jump through in the interview process, asking them if they agree to the salary range that you’ve indicated on your indeed jut posting.
It can be simple things like saying, submit your cover letter and resume as one PDF, not two separate ones, and seeing if they can follow instructions. I wanna be clear, we’re not trying to make them jump through 50,000 hoops before we hire them, but
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker 2: A couple’s probably reasonable. Yeah. You’re paying attention for Do they show up on time?
Are they [00:24:00] polite to people when they come into the gym? Like I make a point to not greet my interviewees at the door and make them talk to somebody else. Yeah. Because I wanna see how do they interact with other people. And again, I’m not being a weirdo about it. I’m just like,
Speaker: yeah,
Speaker 2: hey, I think that’s this person.
Could you go say hi to them? I’m busy and I just pretend part of the process. 50 seconds. Yeah. And I think also part of it is, I don’t know if this is truly best practice in interviewing. I don’t pretend to be amazing at interview. I’ve only ever really been self-employed, never had a corporate management position, but I try to have a really open conversation with them in the interview.
It’s easy for [00:24:30] someone to fake it for 45 minutes. We can all do it. I could be exhausted right now and you have no idea because I know how to turn it on for this podcast. That’s not the truth. I like these podcasts, but it’s a thing. I could take it. I could put on a, I could do
Speaker: that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you have a bit of a longer interview and you ask them some harder questions and I intentionally try to be a little bit more casual, then I probably should be, because I want them to bring their guard down and I can ask them behavior-based interview questions about situations with specific examples where they’ve done and not done those things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I’m probably gonna get a realer answer. And then some of it is [00:25:00] just a risk. You have to hire them and that’s why you have a probationary period and if they fuck it up, you are ruthless with firing ’em, unfortunately.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I’ll say yes and to all those things. Yeah. Yes. I think those are all great ideas, and I think some of those behavioral based interview questions can be about integrity.
Right. Tell me about a time when you were out of line of in your own integrity where you didn’t do what you said you were gonna do, and how did you recover. That’s a great example of do they have a sense of ownership of their mistakes? Tell me about a time when, you know, when you, you didn’t wanna do something and you [00:25:30] said no personally or professionally, right?
Like, there’s all kinds of questions you could ask that are, uh, geared towards people’s integrity. I’ll also say that. This is a thing you can look for when you do a stress test who are big fans of doing stress test during hiring process, which means get them to come in and spend a little more time with you and your team and end.
During that. You can see if they do all the things, make, ask them to make commitments or agreements to certain things. Agreements to show up on time, agree agreements to come prepared with something, agreement to, et cetera, et cetera, and see if [00:26:00] they follow through. Can they follow through and say, if you come prepared with a five minute workout, you’ll take us through.
And come at this time and make it specific. Will they follow through with what they said they were going to do? I think all of those, I think are moments where you look for this person’s sense of integrity
Speaker 2: and to call it out. If you see it out, like, I wanna be clear the, I’ve said it before, but it’s worth rooting.
The goal isn’t perfection.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker 2: Like you, I’m honored that you see someone, me as someone with high integrity, and I see myself screwing up every day. It’s this kind of ongoing [00:26:30] pursuit, and it is so easy to just avoid that friction conversation in an interview when it’s like. Maybe they were a couple minutes late on sending you that thing and instead of being like, ah, they didn’t send the thing, should I bring them on?
Should I not? Just ask them, Hey Michael, I noticed you were five minutes late on submitting that thing. We have deadlines for a reason. Can I just ask what happened? Yes. Because that answer might actually be more valuable than the deadline you had in place in the first place.
Speaker: Yeah, 100%. And this is a, this is like a real theme throughout so many topics and organizational psychology, which is [00:27:00] conflict is inevitable.
Mistakes are inevitable, right? Downturns in business are inevitable, right? There’s all these things that are inevitable. That’s not the point is not to avoid these things entirely. The point is not to avoid people being out of a line of integrity. It’s going to happen. All of it is about, we’re only as good as our ability to rebound from these moments.
And so if you are get someone who chooses clearly out of line with their integrity and did not do what they said they’re gonna do during an interview process. What a gift. Yeah, what a gift to address that and talk about that and see if they’re able to own [00:27:30] it and have a conversation to work through it, because then you’re really testing what it’s like to work with someone, because that’s gonna be, so many of our conversations are like, this thing you said, it didn’t happen.
Let’s talk through it. And I think that’s a great thing to look for when you’re trying to build a team.
Speaker 2: I will take the person who makes mistakes and owns the hell out of it. God, I wanna work shoulder to shoulder with that person. Yeah. I don’t wanna work with the person who is, everything is perfect all the time and the 1% of times they get it wrong.
The castle crumbles. I can’t deal with
Speaker: that. Yeah. Just meltdown or avoid [00:28:00] or Yeah. 100%. Yeah. We could keep going all day on this topic I bet. Which is why we accidentally made it over our time for 30 minutes. But, but listen, I think it was a great conversation. I really appreciate you jumping in and having it.
Let me put you on the spot and talk about. Equality. I do really respect and admire in you, and I think it’s one that our listeners all really strive for and we all wanna be part of teams and communities and relationships and families of people who have integrity and do what they say they’re gonna do.
So I think this is a topic that’s important for us to cover. So thanks for the great [00:28:30] conversation, my friend.
Speaker 2: Thank you. This was fun.
Speaker: Yeah, listeners, have a kick ass week. I’ll see you on the next one.
Speaker 2: Bye
Speaker: bye.
Speaker 2: Go,
go, go, go. Go.