Episode 228: Paul de la Garza – Mastering Leadership: Strategies for Engagement, Delegation, and Connection

Paul de la Garza  00:03

Making sales social is really identifying the pain points or the pleasure points that will need points. Our clients are the unit selling that you are really creating a solution for some things that the customers truly want.

Bob Woods  00:17

Welcome to the Making Sales Social Podcast featuring the Top Voices in Sales, Marketing, and Business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show! 

Brynne Tillman  00:42

Welcome back to making sales social, I have a really special guest today. He is a friend and a customer and an influencer and inspires me every time we chat as an expert in sales and leadership. I’m so excited to Welcome Paul DeLaGarza. Hi, Paul.

Paul de la Garza  01:04

How are you? Brynne, Thank you so much for having me.

Brynne Tillman  01:06

Oh, my gosh, I’m so excited. We’ve been working together for so long. I can’t believe we waited this long to do this. But I’m thrilled. You know, we ask every one of our guests one question, and then we’ll kind of dive deep into the sales and leadership world. Which is, What does making sales social mean to you?

Paul de la Garza  01:28

You know, it’s interesting, because it really resonates with the very principle of sales that we that I promote, and that I presented to clients in my public speaking, essentially sales is really sales, making sales, social is really identifying the pain points or the pleasure points that will need points of a client so that you’re not selling that you are really creating a solution for some things that the customers truly wants, selling in the minds of many people has got somewhat of a bad rap. 

Because a lot of people interpret selling as a too fast-talking individual who’s going to cram down the customers throughout a product that they may or may not need. And that is far from it, we have evolved significantly in those areas. And when you have an open-ended kind of flow of conversation in which the sales professional seeks to understand, truly seeks to really embrace what that customer needs. 

When they create the value proposition that is based on our response to what the client has said, what happens is that you’re no longer looked upon as an individual who is selling anything you’re looked upon as the source of solutions. And that is when we truly connect with the client and long-term relationships are made. So I think that’s my best description of sales social.

Brynne Tillman  02:59

Yeah, and you know, that aligns with one of our taglines, which is detach from what the prospect is worth to you and attach to what you are worth to the prospect.

Paul de la Garza  03:09

That is, I think, I wish I knew that tagline and would have said dive into it would have been by far more concise and more effective.

Brynne Tillman  03:16

It’s all good. It’s great. I love it. So now I really want to take a little a deep dive, you have to really align expertise with our audience. You have been an incredible sales trainer and coach for specific industries. Yours. I love, I mean, I’m always learning every time I listen to you, or it’s great. And you have another area that is absolutely vital, I think more today than ever before, which is leadership. 

How do you lead these people, whether it’s the sales team or the entire operation in a way that creates a culture of success? And so I’d love to talk, first of all, how did you get this expertise in sales and leadership? Talk a little bit about your background or your journey?

Paul de la Garza  04:16

Wide, virtually my entire journey in working as a professional has been in those two areas. I started in sales at a very young age and then just some natural progression. I was promoted to supervisory positions. What I found is that initially I was so ill equipped when I first got my first position as a supervisor to really lead a team that I began to become very curious about the things that I needed to do in order to really serve the team, so to speak. 

And in the past 30 years, I have had positions predominantly that are in the sales and marketing area, but positions of leadership. So organically, I began to really acquire a significant amount of experience in both areas, then what I did is really start focusing on really sharpening both skills through additional training and, and really following some of the top minds in both areas. And that’s their primary where I have today. And those are the two key areas.

Brynne Tillman  05:35

That’s awesome. Share a little bit about your, your philosophy, like how do you define leadership, and what’s the philosophy to create that healthy and productive culture through leadership.

Paul de la Garza  05:49

You know, I’m going to take advantage of the discourse and share a definition that I give a lot of my clients. And when I speak, and I train is part of the training, the idea of leadership is the identification of ambition, be very, very clear on that mission, then taking a group of people and aligning them behind that mission, so that they really buy into it, they understand it, that really there becomes part of it, and they truly connect with it. And that ultimately, the mission itself becomes such an influence, that it becomes literally the invisible leader. 

In other words, people feel compelled that they need to promote the mission and achieve it for the sake of their own personal fulfillment, because of the fact that they see themselves as integral parts of the achievement of that mission. And they understand exactly the positive impact that’s going to have on a plan, the receipt, the recipients of that effort. And when you have what I call a high-performance culture, you have people that truly have engagement, and it goes from compliance, to commitment, you have real commitment in the team, and boy, you can achieve some extraordinary things.

Brynne Tillman  07:07

You know, that leads me into the question, you said the word engagement, yes, and getting healthy engagement and keeping up morale in this hybrid work environment where you’ve got folks that are either 100% remote or, or a hybrid of in and out of the office. And it’s a very different experience. And leaders need to lead differently now and talk a little bit about the adjustments and changes that they need to make in order to keep up that engagement and morale.

Paul de la Garza  07:44

Brynne, you have made a remarkable observation, you really have because what happens here is that a lot of people find themselves in positions of leadership, but they really just act as managers. And there is a significant concrete difference between management and leadership. Management is more process oriented. Leadership is more strategic and visionary. And when you have a combination of both, okay, you really have a very powerful component, what happens is that a lot of people truly are put in positions of leadership. And unfortunately, despite the fact that they may be very, very competent, they’re not prepared to do that. 

They really position themselves in such a fashion that they’re continuing to lead in this dysfunction. So as a result of that, to your point, you have this engagement, I’ll share a statistic, the Gallup Corporation, which we are all familiar with because of the political surveys that they do also work with the private sector. And in doing so, they found something astonishing. They found that in a survey that they did, over the span of five years, they found that only 30% of the employees surveyed were engaged. In other words out of every 10 surveys three only three were engaged in the other seven we will call it had quit in place.

Brynne Tillman  09:18

Oh I love that. That’s a new hashtag.

Paul de la Garza  09:19

Yeah quit in place. In other words, they were showing up on time eight o’clock, but the level of performance was strictly responsive. There we transaction “Okay, I have to do this I’m gonna get paid.” I cannot wait for my next break. I cannot wait until lunch break. I cannot wait for five o’clock. And the level of engagement was just damaged. Gallup surveyed these same employees and said what is it that you’re missing? What would you like to have narrowed it to four things? Okay. The first one was a sense of validation, a lot of the employees that do not feel validated by virtue of what’s the word being they’re being treated? Quite literally as you don’t need to know it just do as I say. 

And that quietly diminishes the individual. And when an individual does not find a sense of purpose or contribution and what they do, you have, unfortunately, what they found, which is, I’m here for the paycheck. And I cannot wait to get out of here, because I don’t like it here. So validation was one of them. The second one was a sense of purpose. They did not understand the core purpose of the actual business and how they relate to that entire purpose. Jim Collins, you probably have heard of him love Jim calm. Yeah. And actually, he’s from Colorado. He’s a neighbor of yours. 

Yeah, He lives in Boulder. And he did a study, he found that there were a number of people on demo companies, excuse me, in the New York Stock Exchange, that were outperforming the rest of the companies 15 fold in the measures of Wall Street, I’m talking about shareholder growth, profitability, etc, very concrete, very pragmatic measures. And they went and pulled these companies. And they found that every single one of them said, we have a core purpose. And Collins requests are what means that the reason we exist beyond just making money in that notion transcends throughout the entire company.

And when it does, the level of engagement, the level of commitment is extraordinary. And you have a number of companies that you and I know very well, for example, Disney has a, quote, purpose statement to make people happy, that has transcended to such levels, because it’s part of the culture. And that’s part of the leadership. So when you have an element of purpose, and it is reiterated to the employee, the employee begins to really engage that much more. 

Going back to the Gallup measure, the third thing that they found is that a lot of these people did a lot of repetitive work. You had people that served in front of a computer, managing files, you had manufacturing, and so forth. They needed an amount of time to be able to regenerate to rest. And they were not getting it.

Brynne Tillman 12:32

And burning out.

Paul de la Garza  12:34

The burnout factor was huge. But again, instead of people just simply saying, I’m done, because I’m exhausted. They were continuing to come to work, but they had quit in place.

Brynne Tillman  12:45

It will come. I know there’s a fourth, but I just want to go deeper on this for a second. Yes, yes. What can leaders do to help prevent burnout in their teams?

Paul de la Garza  12:56

Number one, to be connected with individuals to have communication. If you really look at any principle, if you talk to Maxwell, you talk to the top leaders, you talk to Tony Robbins and all these people that are clearly opinion makers, they will tell you that in leadership, there’s a centerpiece element and that is communication, effective communication. And by definition, we’re talking about communication, not only from standpoint of conveyance, we’re talking about communication from the standpoint of absorption, assimilation, meaning, how effective that leader is through listening. And I’m talking about listening actively. 

Because when you listen actively, what happens is that you find yourself doing two things, the accuracy of the message in the transmission is improved upon, but also the validation factor, the people that are being listened to feel validated, he heard me he sees me, she really is connected with me and the connection begins. So the first thing that the individual needs to do is to truly understand what the situation is with a particular employee. The second thing is to convey the core purpose is you know, what you are, you are very important in this entire process, you are extremely critical in terms of how we are going to go about achieving our overall mission in the objectives of the company. 

And I’m going to say that and mainly because many of them maybe do not even believe that that’s the case, when in reality. That is truly the case. And I like to give you an example. There’s a gentleman by the name of Bill George. He has written a number of books; he’s a professor of leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and he was the CEO of a company called mechatronics. And he made a statement, he made his speech to this is an all hands kind of meeting and presented the fact that everybody was vital to the overall achievement of the mission. 

Upon completion of his presentation, he was approached by the people who were essentially representatives of the janitorial services. And they basically said, Mr. George, with all due respect, that was a beautiful speech. But frankly, we don’t see how we are relevant. And he looked at him and said, Tinker, look around you. What do you see? So we have beautiful buildings. Who takes care of it? And as a result of that, who do you think happens when people, customers, associates, or partners come through our doors? What is the first impression that they get? 

You are as vital to the achievement of the mission as I am, as our executive team is our sales team and our operations team. We are all one unit, an extraordinary statement. And these people walked away, feeling very compelled, in terms of feeling that they were part of the mission, and the mission itself became the invisible leader. So you know, you have those, those components that have become very, very powerful, very, very compelling for an individual. Because we do have a tendency to identify and define our sense of self, our virtual what we do.

Brynne Tillman  16:29

That’s awesome. So we don’t forget, let’s go to number four, and then I have another.

Paul de la Garza  16:33

Yes, of course, of course. And then of course, the essential number four is focus. Okay? Think of it this way, we have a situation where a person is given their job description, okay. And there is an anticipation or expectation that this individual needs to figure out exactly what that leader is thinking, by virtue of the job description that they have. This is a huge vacuum that exists between leadership, and the team members. I shouldn’t complain if these are the kinds of things that keep me employed. Okay. However, this is a huge thing, because people need to be guided to say, okay, by the way, within the framework of your job description, the focus this year is for us to be able to do A, B, and C. 

And that will really assist the individual to really generate a higher level of, of results. Okay. Let me just add another commentary real quick in terms of the validation and the focus, when you are not effectively validating their propensity of the employee, the team members to attempt to validate themselves. And when they do that, they start doing things like hoarding information, or, or happens, because they say, I am the one that has this information that I will distributed piecemeal, and as a result of me having this information I’ll be looked upon as that man that knows, or the woman that knows.

Brynne Tillman  18:06

But that hurts, the team overall hurts.

Paul de la Garza  18:08

The team that hurts the culture. And people start working very hard to try and become relevant in the eyes of the team and of their leaders. Imagine that through validation, and by virtue of the focus, that they take that energy, and they use it to promote the desired outcome, the big picture mission, it will be a completely different picture. And that’s essentially.

Brynne Tillman  18:33

Oh, I love that. Alright, so I have two more questions. Yes. One as a leader, what do you like as what do leaders need to do to help develop and grow their people?

Paul de la Garza  18:48

The way I’m going to answer this is going to be having a root in what we just talked about. But one of the biggest problems that exists in leadership is the lack of ability to effectively delegate. When you effectively delegate, essentially what you’re doing is not only you’re giving some, something that has to be done to your team member, but you have to empower them. You have to trust them. You have to promote and coach them in order for them to actually generate those results. So if a leader truly wants to accomplish these things, the process of delegation is extremely important. And unfortunately, Brynne. This is where the biggest sand trap exists. 

This is where the biggest problem exists. leaders do not effectively delegate and they are stricken by the notion if you want things done right. Do it yourself. Okay. And when you have an individual that has got five or six executive vice presidents or managers and so forth, people that truly are very, very competent, and are ready to do the job and they do not receive the proper delegation, you start creating a disability within the actual culture of the team, and if not the company. So effective delegation is the one thing that you have to really focus on. 

The other factor is to make sure that the individuals understand, truly understand what the overall high-level mission is. And then say, “Okay, so this is the mission, I would like it.” Let’s say that you are a team member. “Ron, I would like for you to tell us, how do you think we should achieve that?” Because the answer is, Yes. Engagement, said he is asking me to give him feedback as to how we can do that. And then imagine this, you come up with a really brilliant idea. And we implement, what happens is you begin to see your personal voice and signature, upon the overall direction of the company in nothing could be more validating than that. 

So making sure that everybody understands the core purpose, as we talked about earlier, but also said, how do we go about doing that? Once you have that, you need one more thing, and that is this, the empowerment and the authority to execute. So now we’ve got the mission, we have got the recommendations of the team in terms of the steps how we’re about to go about doing this. Now, they need to have the empowerment, the 30 and the resources to get that done. And when you have that the rest is organic, the coaching, the communication, so forth.

Brynne Tillman  21:43

They love that. And there’s a moment in there that I think transcends leadership that we don’t hear enough. And it’s to me that. There is a mic drop moment that I just want to highlight, yes, that I think if every leader could embrace would optimize the experience, which is which and I’m going to try to word it succinctly. But when you delegate tasks to your team, you are helping them grow. 100%. 

And I think like when we think about this, “Oh, I don’t want to give it to her, I’ll do this, oh, it takes more time for me to teach them for them for me to do it myself.” But if you are a leader who is literally guiding people to be successful in their career, if you actually do it yourself over and over again, you are not leading. You’re doing exactly right. And so when you said that? Well, I mean, I’m just re-reiterating what you said and like, because that’s my aha moment of this, right that like, that’s my oh my gosh, you are doing them a disservice when you do it yourself.

Paul de la Garza  23:13

Yes. And frankly, consider this just to build on what you just said, which is very important. You have certain limits, limits of time, resources, energy, etc. And then what you’re doing is by abstaining from delegating this so that your team can do it to some degree, because of all the other responsibilities that the leader has, they can do it more effectively, what you’re doing is you are literally setting yourself up and the team for failure. And unfortunately, this happens much too often. I wanted to ask if I could just mention something that I think is very important in terms of elements of delegation.

 And the best way that I can illustrate it is by giving you two examples. If you have two people and one of them is the leader, and the other one is a team member, the leader comes up to the team member and says follow me. And they go to a conference room and the leader says, “I’d like for you to paint that wall.” There’s the paint there, the brushes, everything is predetermined. How long will it take you to paint the wall? It should arrive in about 30 minutes. It’s great. I’ll be back in 25. See, here are you doing 25 minutes passed by. The guy comes in and the leader comes in and he notices that the employee is on his phone. 

He’s about to admonish the individual until he looks at the wall and the wall is painted perfectly. And so Oh, wow. And the employee or the team member says that’s two coats. So you did two coats of Yep, it’s done. But wait a minute, I noticed that the other walls really are in bad condition. Why didn’t you paint those? And the response there respectfully as you never asked, you never told me now, that is what we call the transactional task-oriented exchange. Do this, I’ll pay you for that. Overnight. Right. And at that point, the individual is compliant. He’s complied. And he’s complied brilliantly. But that’s where it stops.

Now, I’ll give you the same example of the same two people. The leader in this case, however, takes him to the conference room and says the following. He says, “By the way, see this conference room.” Yeah, we would like to make this the central nervous system of communication for our clients and our referral partners. And we would like to actually make sure that it is functioning within the next three weeks or the next month, etc. And we would like to achieve the following things in terms of video conferencing, in sales, efforts, training, etc. How do you think we should do this? 

Well, I will paint all the walls. Okay, what else would you do? And that team member begins to now rely on a fallen solution. Correct. And then the leader says, “Great, everything you said sounds fantastic.” Here’s a budget, you own it. Okay, that means that this function needs to be addressed by you, you are the authority, you’re the final authority, even I will submit to what you give as direction, because there’s no other way that I can hold you accountable otherwise. 

So now, the individual is committed, there is engagement. So they can see his baby. Right? That’s right. Right. And that’s effective delegation. And that is the difference. Don’t get me wrong. There are certain industries where task-oriented transactional leadership is essential, military, certain aspects of construction, etc. You’re not going to sit down in the middle of wars and bully lines. That’s right. So those are the differences. And that is just a sample of effective don’t.

Brynne Tillman  27:07

I love it. I love it. Okay, my last question, What question did I not ask you that I should have?

Paul de la Garza  27:16

Um, I think that probably the most important one is to make sure that people, how do we make sure that people truly understand the critical elements of leadership. And I think that leadership, not unlike sales, has these two disciplines essentially the same root? It is not about the leader, it’s about the team in sales. It’s not about the sales professional, it’s about the client. A leader should actually ask open-ended questions, ironically, in sales. Same thing, because it matters who says it? When a leader asks an open-ended question to a team member and the team member discovers what the leader guided through some skillful questions, then the level of assimilation and retention and engagement is greater because the team member feels I came up with that and I concluded that we’re essentially the same. 

When you sit down and you say, by the way, what will be the greatest challenge that you have in this particular area? So these are my pain points, and so forth? What does the solution look like for you? Well, I’d like to have that. What if I told you that we can accomplish this with these fashions? So that would be fantastic. I would buy that. The client has already said I would if you have that solution, I’ll take it. So the components of communication have to be really examined because communication is a very fragile kind of thing. I believe it’s understood. By definition, a lot of people say, define communication. So yeah, my ability to convey the written spoken word effectively and concisely. 

Okay, anything else? No. That’s it, when in reality, communication is a great deal about listening. But assimilating about bringing in another person, in connection in leadership, connection is essential. Sales connection is essential in leadership, vulnerability by the leader is something that 10 years ago, unheard of. Forget it, not even not a chance today, vulnerability, rage connection. So I’ve been where you are. I have failed a number of times, but I look at failure as a rite of passage. Whereas you look at failure as a fatal terminal thing. Now. It’s a great teacher. And when you have those kinds of things the team needs creates a high level of cohesiveness and it really becomes a very functional culture.

Brynne Tillman  29:58

Love it off. such magic. Thank you so much.

Paul de la Garza  30:06

Thanks for this great opportunity. Thank you.

Brynne Tillman  30:09

Well, I mean, the value that you’re bringing to our listeners right now is absolutely phenomenal. So as we close out, how can people get a hold of you?

Paul de la Garza  30:19

Well, a number of ways. First of all, I have a website, highperformancesolutions.com, you can actually book a complimentary coaching session there at no cost. And that will be a great way of beginning the dialog so that I can understand exactly what your goals are and how we may be able to actually complement that. Number two, my email address is p.delagarza. That’s D-E-L-A-G-A-R-Z-A at H dash P-B-S. Papa, Bravo, Sam.  That’s a little military inside, dot.com. And those are the two critical ways that you can reach me.

Brynne Tillman  31:07

Jane, you’re on LinkedIn.

Paul de la Garza  31:09

Oh my god. How could I have missed that considering who you are? Folks, just just so you know, she has become my LinkedIn muse. Actually my muse in many other ways, but especially.

Brynne Tillman  31:22

You’re so sweet. Well, I enjoy working with you very much.

Paul de la Garza  31:26

My pleasure, My privilege. 

Brynne Tillman  31:27

Yeah. And so for all the listeners, I am sure that you got incredible value out of today. I don’t know how you could nap. And you know, stay tuned for our upcoming episodes on making sales social, and until then, when you’re out and about. Don’t forget to make your sales social.

Bob Woods  31:48

Don’t miss an episode, visit socialsaleslink.com/podcast. Leave a review down below. Tell us what you think, what you learned, and what you want to hear from us next, register for free resources at LinkedInlibrary.com You can also listen to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website socialsaleslink.com for more information.