‘How to Create a Winning Culture’ With CEO, Sales & Leadership Coach Nathan Jamail

The Destiny Awakening Interviews is a podcast with Andrew Wayfinder and his guests.

Every week (sometimes more) we have a short focused interview with an expert, author, speaker designed to bring you powerful insights, inspiration and ways to break free, live life by your vision and values, and make a difference in our changing and challenging world.

Listen to the podcast at: https://www.andrewwayfinder.com/blog/DA0045

Andrew Hryniewicz

Hello everyone and a very warm welcome to another edition of the Destiny Awakening Interviews. I’m Andrew Wayfinder Hryniewicz. And I’m joined today by Nathan Jamail, CEO and entrepreneur, sales leadership speaker, coach and author.

So a very warm welcome to you, Nathan. And where are you hanging out today?

Thank you, Andrew, I am hanging out in the beautiful town of Marble Falls out in the hill country of Texas.

Andrew Hryniewicz

Oh, that’s a beautiful corner of the world. You’re a lucky man.

Nathan Jamail

It is a little bit of heaven.

Andrew Hryniewicz

I know. So let’s get on to the work that you’ve done and your experience.

Nathan Jamail is a former CEO and entrepreneur turned top sales leadership, keynote speaker, author and executive coach. For almost three decades, Nathan has either been setting sales and other records in business, or training others how to do so.

Nathan has worked with leaders in Fortune 100 companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Hilton, Verizon, FedEx, the US Army and many more, helping them build winning teams and thriving cultures by turning great leaders into great coaches.

A business leader who writes books for other business leaders, Nathan has three bestselling books, “The Leadership Playbook”, “The Sales Leaders Playbook”, and “The Sales Professionals Playbook”, as well as his newest book, “Serve Up and Coach Down”.

All of Nathan’s work as a speaker, an author, and a coach is built on real street sales knowledge based on three decades of sales, business ownership, and leadership experience.

So thank you, Nathan, for your time today. And the topic we’ll be looking at is “How to Create a Winning Culture”. And Nathan’s going to unpack that idea in six questions.

So the first question, Nathan is, who is your ideal client? And what’s the transformation, your work and your talks help them achieve?

Nathan Jamail

So an ideal client for me is someone who is already having some success, or a lot of success, who’s looking to get to the next level of success. And what I mean by that is, a lot of businesses were successful by demand, or by just being present and what we do.

Although it’s always the idea of “Can you become a better parent?”, “How do you become a better leader?”, “How do you become a stronger team?” And so, no matter how successful, or what the business is like for a client. It’s “How do I get my people to grow?”

And we have a saying that says, “The number one job of a leader is to make their people better”. In most organizations, are people more experienced and more knowledgeable, but they’re not actually better? So how do you do that?

And that’s how we go into “coaching employees” versus “managing them”. A lot of the stuff I talk about, Andrew, it’s not rocket science, right? I always tell people and you’ve heard a thousand times, “It’s common sense, but not common behaviors”, right?

How do we get more committed employees? The reality is we have to become more committed leaders.

You know, when we look at an organization… And in my teachings, and my writings, there’s some real difficult points to make. Like, for example, I debunk in my latest books are about coach down.

I debunk “servant leadership”. I don’t believe you should serve your employees. I believe you should serve those who pay you. I believe you should coach your employees.

And when you hear that on first brush, it’s like, “Wait a minute, that sounds like sucking up”, Right? And it’s like, “No, no, no, realize this, no matter what country you’re in, no matter what industry your in… in every organization, the two greatest competitive advantage of any organization is alignment, and speed of change”.

And you can’t achieve those two things without a thriving culture. And what does that mean?

And again, my perfect audience is that company or that organization… And I do nonprofits, and government, and private…

And one thing they all have in common, is they’re saying, “Hey, we’ve got this pretty good organization, how do we make it better?”

And it’s how we think, how we prepare, how we execute. And all that stuff’s tied into real basic principles of holding people accountable, making sure we have the right people in a team.

And so that’s the ideal client, and that is the long answer to the question.

Okay. Well, I think that dovetails perfectly into question number two.

Andrew Hryniewicz

When they come through the door as an audience or as somebody who wants your help what’s the biggest challenge they’re facing? I mean, what’s the 80/20? What’s the one thing that’s causing 80% of their problems?

Nathan Jamail

Yeah, I think it’s… So I’m going to answer in one word, or two words and then… but there’s a lot of reasons behind, and it is employee engagement. Right? If you said “What’s my… it’s employee engagement”.

But the reality of it is the employee engagement is the result of a lot of small things that aren’t being done. And so if you said “Nathan, what are the three biggest takeaways someone takes from working with me?” You… and you’ll hear it in their language.

The first one is that a thriving culture is required and based on us only allowing those who deserve to be on our team to be on our team.

And at first brush, it sounds harsh, I believe in a simple fact “If you don’t love your job, you should quit”. Everybody can love their job.

Listen, I was a janitor, I sold beepers. There hadn’t been a job I haven’t loved, and it wasn’t a widget that I loved. I love the engagement about it. So now let’s be quite candid, the janitor thing was probably the worst I’ve ever had. But it was the means to a better job.

So… the thrive got me there. But here’s the thing. When you look at leaders, a lot of people stay at jobs that they don’t want to be at… but they think of the paycheck.

And a lot of leaders allow people to stay there, even though they don’t think they should be there. But because they think they need a body.

And so we’re allowing these people to stay in a relationship that neither one of them thinks it’s a good fit, but because of our own selfish needs, we allow it to continue.

And so one thing I talk about leaders is our job is to be selfless and say, “Listen, Andrew, man, life’s too short for you to be here, man. You don’t like it here.”

And when you have these conversations, sometimes you find out people do like it, they’re just going through a tough time. But if you don’t start that conversation you won’t know.

So when you ask what it is?

The first one is, we must embrace conflict, to help people grow and help people make difficult decisions. And that’s a thriving culture.

I’ll give you a perfect example of how it works. — If you have a home in the dead of winter, and no matter how many heaters you have, if you have two windows wide open, your house will never warm up. —

Well, if you have this great team, but you have two or three people on your team bringing everyone else down, you’ll never have a thriving culture… The windows are open.

And it’s everyone’s job to be a part of it. It’s the leaders job to mandate it. And so I talk about that idea — that you can’t have a culture without the right beliefs and mindsets — are very real in the organization.

That’s the first thing. The second thing would be we’ll talk about is this.

If you ask any leader describe their best employee, they’ll never say experience or knowledge. They say positive attitude, can do attitude, committed. Shows up early, always leave in…

They always describe the attributes and the skills of someone. Yet as businesses, we don’t practice…. So you’ll hear the word practice. For me, it’s one of my key words.

And there’s just training and practicing. Training is learning something new. Practicing is getting better at something we already know.

Which is why people see my books to see all these sports, X’s and O’s. And they think “Oh, you must be an athlete”. 5'3 in the ninth grade, Andrew, no athletic career. I have three daughters — I could sing every frozen song there is. It’s not because I’m a man. I run my businesses like a sports team does.

Or if you’re in acting, anything that’s a skill based business… I believe the skills of my people will generate more success in my organization than how much they know. The effort outweighs the knowledge.

And again, this doesn’t mean you don’t have to know your business, right? I mean, but that’s table stakes. And so, the first one is you have this attitude, this belief and hold people accountable to be in the right attitude.

And the second one is the practice.

And the third one, and the third one is the constant fight to grow as individuals, as leaders, right? There’s, a piece I say in my speeches, when you look at professional sports, if the coaches didn’t make those players show up for practice, most of them wouldn’t. And they’ve been doing all their life, they know that’s part of their life.

As leaders, our job is to mandate that our people do the things that they want to do, that they don’t do. Because it’s good for them. And it’s because we care.

And so those if you ask what it is, that’s when you walk in the door, when you walk out, those are the things that you will leave with.

Andrew Hryniewicz

Okay, well, I think you’ve actually answered question number three, your number one insight, you gave us three. So let’s move on to four.

In terms of your own development, what was the most impactful concept, book, program, talk or experience? What’s the one that stands out in your memory as “Oh my God!”, you know, that really shifted the needle the most.

Nathan Jamail

You know, it’s hard to find one, but I’ll give you one that I can just come off the top of my head, and that is Dale Carnegie’s book, and I listened to it every single year. It waswritten in the 40s or 50s. “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.

And from that book, which I’ve probably listened to in the last 15 years 50 to 60 times, he talks about the value of influencing others is based on understanding other people’s perceptions instead of debating our own.

And in that debate, he says, as humans, we will argue we’re right 100% of the time, yet we’re wrong 80% of time. It’s because we’re arguing our perception.

He says, if you want to influence people, stop trying to argue your perception and start understanding theirs.

And so, that basic principle has taught me to sit back and listen to someone’s perspective. And in fact, I kind of stole that idea. And if you read my books, I tell you in there, I’m not smart enough to offer an original idea. They’re all from experiences and leaders.

And one of the things when I wrote “Serve Up, Coach Down”… I do all my executive coaching… I had this constant battle of leaders of leaders. And they would say, “My boss is doing this”. And it’s this constant battle between their people and their boss.

And I’m like, “Wait a minute…” And I even said it myself, in business, in corporate America for over 20 years. When the corporation would say, “We’re going to do this.” And we would say, “That’s a terrible idea. They have no idea what’s going on in the field.”

And what we’re really saying is, “Our perception is more accurate than their vision”. And this creates this misalignment. And I said earlier, that one of the biggest competitive advantages in business is alignment.

And so when you take that concept, and then you take the ideas from Dale Carnegie, I put them together, and I said, “Listen, serving up is about believing in our leaders’ vision, more than our own perspectives”.

And so if you’re my leader, and you come to me, say, “Nathan, we’re no longer going to answer the phone”. And I’m thinking “that is nuts.” But I have to believe in your vision more than my own perspective and say, “Okay, Andrew, let’s go”.

Because the reality is this, there’s an 80% chance we’re wrong. So let’s give a little grace to the people we follow. So those who follow us will give us grace.

And so, when we understand that, the faster we all can get on the same page and start running the same direction, the faster we can do a U-turn. Or make an adjustment.

But if we’re constantly begging people, and getting them to buy in, instead of having belief, we’re never going to get there.

And so, I say that Dale Carnegie “How to Win Friends Influence People”. And the idea of someone understanding someone else’s perspective, instead of debating our own has had a significant impact on not just how I teach, but I think how I live and how I lead.

I mean, I use it in my marriage, right? You know, on a side note, I’ll never forget, whenever I meet someone interesting, “Give me your advice”.

If they’re a father, I said, “Give me a father advice”. Because I have four children.

If you’re a husband, and you’ve been married for a long time, I say “Give me a husband advice, give me a nugget”. And one nugget someone gave me says “My wife and I haven’t fought in 20 years”.

I said, “Okay, I’m listening”. Right? And I said, “Well, how do you do it?” And he goes, “My wife has never tried to hurt me. She has a different perspective than I do… So how do I get mad at that? If she’s just trying to help me? How do I get mad at that? If her perspective is different?”

And that’s genius, but again, that goes back to Dale Carnegie’s, “If you want to influence people, understand their perspectives instead of debate yours.” And so again, now I use that in my personal life. I’m not mastered it, by the way, my wife still thinks I talk too much. So…

Andrew Hryniewicz

Okay, so question number five, what free resource would you like to share with the audience to help them?

Andrew Hryniewicz

So I will send, we’ll have on our website, and also we’ll put it in the show notes. We’ll give the link, download the free PDF of my “Sales Leaders Game Plan”.

Nathan Jamail

And this is a small, easy book that has short stories and real action. Like real live case studies, like I was coaching a client, we’re having this issue, I wrote a two or three-page article on it.

And we turned all that content into a small little, softcover book, and we’ll send that link. And that will get people really good feel kind of global view of what my principles of teaching are.

Andrew Hryniewicz

Okay, great.

So that’ll be nathanjamail.com.

Okay, Nathan, so the last question number six. What should I asked you that I didn’t ask you?

What should you have asked me that you didn’t ask me?

Nathan Jamail

And I think the question that you could have asked me, that should have, is how do I know if I made an impact on people?

Okay, yes, how do you judge that?

Andrew Hryniewicz

Yeah, I think our number one job is… whatever we do, your job, my job, isn’t the work we do, it’s the impact we make on people.

Nathan Jamail

And so when I do a speech, or I do coaching, or someone reads my book, I judge my level of impact on how they then engage in their… how they impact others.

If someone goes to my event, and I go to a client’s office, and I do a keynote, speech or workshop. And six months later, people are still scrimmaging with their employees, still talking about holding people accountable, because we care.

Using the words and the behaviors that we teach, then I know I’ve made an impact. I know I’ve gotten that return on their investment, and I made a difference.

And so the answer is, does the information or the disciplines that I teach or share are they relevant six months, one year, and three years later? And that’s how I know I helped make a difference.

Andrew Hryniewicz

Well, that’s perfect. Nathan, thank you so much for your time today.

Nathan Jamail

Thanks.