The Leadership Mistake That Quietly Destroys Culture | David Orbuch

[00:00:00] Introduction: The Power of Leadership Shadow

[00:00:00] David Orbuch: You don’t typically work for an organization, you work for a person, and if that person connects with you on a human being basis, you have a sense of belonging, you’re gonna stay in that organization. This week on cleared for takeoff, I 

[00:00:11] Charles Eide: have David Orach joining me. David is a longstanding executive, and my mentor, something you teach a lot, is this idea that every leader casts a shadow.

Your 

[00:00:22] David Orbuch: shadow is how people see you when you’re leading what you say, what you do, what you measure, what you prioritize, what you permit. When I ran a hospital, we had a medical error. The doctor said It wasn’t my fault. It’s the nurse’s fault. The nurse said, it wasn’t my fault. It’s the tech’s fault. You know what I said?

It’s my fault. Blaming retrospectively does nothing. Am I holding myself accountable for the shadow I’m creating? Don’t start blaming your teens. Start looking at yourself 

[00:00:50] Charles Eide: in the mirror. You’ve got a high performer, but they’re not a nice person. How do you proceed long term that person’s.

I’m gonna get right to it. Something you teach a lot, and you’re very well versed in, is this idea that every leader casts a shadow. And so I’m trying to understand what that means. What does a shadow look like? And I mean, I’m not even aware of this idea, so help me understand what, what is a shadow that a leader casts and how do we, how do we make it a good 

[00:01:25] David Orbuch: shadow?

Mm-hmm. Well, first of all, the key concept is that the strength of your shadow determines the strength of your business. So you gotta know what your shadow is, and you gotta be intentional about it. And think of your shadow is how people see you all the time when you’re leading. So there’s a variety of different pieces that fit into your shadow, what you say.

Okay, so for example. I tell the people that work for me that I make mistakes. Why do you think I say that? 

[00:02:06] Charles Eide: Maybe to make them feel, like if they make mistakes, it’s a normal thing and that you own them. Exactly right. 

[00:02:15] David Orbuch: Also because it’s true, I do make mistakes. I tell people I make four to five mistakes a day.

You know, hopefully I make four to five correct decisions a day. But the reason I let my team know that I make mistakes is so that they feel comfortable letting me know, wait a minute, David, I think you may not be making the right decision. I would rather know, wanna know now than six months down the road after we built the product and it doesn’t work.

And they say, I knew it all the time, David. It never was going to work. So I let people know. I’m gonna make mistakes, let’s fall forward. And that creates a team, a shadow of everybody who says, we can take some risks, we can work together as a team because someone else on that team is gonna catch me if I’m inaccurate.

I tell people that when I hire, I hire people who are smarter and who work harder than me. Why? Because if I’m the smartest person in the room, we got problems. My skills are to bring people together to get the decision across the line, to create the strategy, to make sure that people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

But I want really smart people smarter than me around the room. So one of the pieces of my shadow is what I say. Another one is, what do I do? So, hang 

[00:03:40] Charles Eide: on. When let’s, I wanna go back to what you say really quick. What? When you say what I say, are you referring to what you say in presentations? Are you saying.

What I say every moment they see me, it 

[00:03:54] David Orbuch: is all the time. As a leader, what you say is critical. If you say, we are a values based organization, but then values don’t come up during your meetings, people don’t know how to live your values, people don’t understand how you are rated on the values, then what you say really doesn’t mean 

[00:04:16] Charles Eide: much.

So you got value. You’re, you’re like, we’re an organization and these are our values, but you don’t talk about ’em ever. 

[00:04:23] David Orbuch: You don’t use them, you don’t use them, you don’t leverage them. You don’t, at the end of the year of evaluate people on those values. But you say, oh, values are important, but nobody then knows why they’re important.

So what does it 

[00:04:37] Charles Eide: do to a team of people when you’ve got values written on things, but then you don’t talk about them? People think 

[00:04:45] David Orbuch: that you shadow is small. It isn’t really important. It’s just something that is supposed to be there for the company. When I ran a hospital, I took the values off the wall and put them on the floor.

Let’s walk on them. Let’s use them. Let’s determine whether or not we’re actually living those values. The value statements you come to in most businesses could fit almost any business. I’ve seen integrity as a value everywhere, but what does it mean for your business? When you say it, what does it mean?

How are you using it? How are you leveraging it to get results? So what you say is critical. Even more critical is what you do, because just because you say something doesn’t mean you’re going to follow through. So if you say, for example, that our. That culture is important, but then you are not intentional about the culture you’re creating in the organization.

That you don’t live the values that we were just talking about because you’re, um, uh, you’re short with people. You are, uh, not listening. Um, if you say you make mistakes, and then when someone says, you know, David, I think you made a mistake, and you say, you are just an idiot. I’m the CEO, I’m right. You know what, what you do is important.

One of the most incredible things that ever happened to me was, um, a leader who said that appreciation was important. I just joined the organization and four months into it, the CEO, so two levels above me, sent me a handwritten note. Thanking me for joining the organization, specifically identifying the work I did in the four months and telling me how critical it was to the mission of the organization.

I thought, oh my gosh, that’s amazing. He knows who I am. He wrote a letter to me, handwritten, you know what I did? I brought it home, I put it on the refrigerator. All the kids’ art was gone. And I put it smack in the front of the refrigerator ’cause I was so proud. So that was a leader who Shadow cast was large because he said, we want to 

[00:06:59] What is a Leadership Shadow?

[00:06:59] David Orbuch: appreciate employees for what they do to our organization.

And he showed it by writing me a note that was more important. Just a note. A note. Just a handwritten, handwritten note. But it was specific. 

[00:07:12] Charles Eide: Yeah. He 

[00:07:12] David Orbuch: knew what I had done in the four months I had been there. I’d only been there four months. I didn’t even know he knew my name. Mm-hmm. But he took the time.

And this leader, he was. Doing stuff much at a higher level than I was. And he had much more important things to do than write me a handwritten note. But he did it because he said, appreciation is critical to our organization. And so he said, I’m going to 

[00:07:39] Charles Eide: also do it. So he took, yeah, he says it’s important, but then he took action and wrote it down.

You get it. I love, I, I have these note cards that I had made that have the company, you know, and I love writing notes to people. I feel like it’s such a powerful thing to acknowledge someone with handwriting. You don’t see it very often. I still have 

[00:08:01] David Orbuch: that note 15 years later. Do you really? I do. Because it is so important to me that, you know, this leader, who I think is, was just an incredible leader, took the time to recognize just.

A regular employee at that point in time, and that made a huge impact on me and it reminded me that he was trying to cast a shadow that was large, that people were important. That when we say, you know, people are our most important resource, he wasn’t just saying it, he was taking action 

[00:08:35] Charles Eide: on it. So how did that impact your behavior?

Did you start writing notes to people? You betcha. 

[00:08:41] David Orbuch: I figured if he could take the time and he worked a lot harder and was paid a lot more and was a lot smarter than me, like I should be doing it. Another example is I had a leader I worked with who said meeting starters are important where you, you know, the belief is that a meeting doesn’t begin until everybody in the room has had the opportunity to talk.

So meeting started would be like, you know, it’s December, it’s the one of the darkest months of the year. What’s bringing you light Charles? And we go around the room and we answer that question just two to three minutes at the beginning of the meeting. Because we wanna believe that everybody at this meeting needs to be engaged.

And again, we talked about this in our organization, but when I saw my leader actually doing it, taking those two to three minutes of the meeting, beginning of the meeting, I thought, if she’s doing it, heck I need to be able to do it myself. And it changed the way I ran my meetings. How do you think that impacts the people in the meeting?

Well, I think it’s huge when people see a leader saying things and doing things that aligned. It’s something that, um, connects. With them because that’s the type of leader they wanna be. And they wanna, you know, you, you don’t typically work for an organization, you work for a person. And if that person comes to the table and um, connects with you on a human being basis, you have a sense of belonging, you’re gonna stay in that organization.

[00:10:18] Charles Eide: Hmm. That’s so powerful when you think about people don’t work for companies. They work for people. Yeah. It’s kind of like what Maha said on our podcast. She said, uh, people don’t follow companies. They follow people. Right. It’s such a powerful thing. ’cause every single person in an organization kind of has their own little individual brand with within the team.

[00:10:41] David Orbuch: I mean we, I created a company with two of my partners that’s called You Belong. Hmm. The whole concept there is if we can create organizations who believe in belonging, employees are going to be retained longer. People are gonna give their discretionary effort and work harder because belonging is just, is just a magic potion.

That if people believe that they belong to this organization, that they feel comfortable in bringing them their true self, you’re gonna be more successful in that organization. 

[00:11:14] Charles Eide: It just makes me think about all the interactions I have every day and how I could be better, like more effective in that way.

And I love the meeting opener thing because you’re right, you attend a meeting and if you just sit down, you could be somewhere else entirely mentally. But once you have to engage with the rest of the team and you share something that’s not necessarily related to the. Meeting you feel this sense of community almost.

[00:11:42] David Orbuch: You know, I was at a meeting, um, not that I was running, and it was going to be, everybody at that meeting had to cut their budget by between 10 and 20%. And we had to figure out collectively who was gonna do 10, who was gonna do 20. It was a two and a half hour meeting. Everybody had spreadsheets. Everybody came with their arms crossed and angry that we were gonna have to cut our budget.

Nobody believed that they could cut. Their budget. And the leader started with the question. He said, before we begin, we’re gonna do a meeting opener. And the meeting opener is, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received? We went around the room really quickly and people talked about their grandfather, people talked about a friend that had given their advice, people, and all of a sudden we all became human.

And this two and a half hour meeting got done in an hour. ’cause we recognized we were gonna all be there. It was gonna be tough, but it wasn’t about fighting each other, it was trying to come to a collective, um, answer to what we were trying to achieve. And it was so much easier when we saw humanity in each other’s eyes.

So I always think that one of the key pieces, you know what most, um, leaders that I’ve seen start a meeting and they say this, okay, we’re gonna go over the agenda. The agenda starts with approving the minutes, and then we’re going to like. You handed the agenda out, don’t lower the energy in the room, build the energy up, and you’re going to be able to leverage that energy to get better results in the 

[00:13:13] Charles Eide: meeting.

What I’m taking away right now is just how deliberate you are with each each thing, right? Because obviously if you show up and you just go over the agenda you already sent out, it’s, it’s almost like you weren’t prepared. Correct. Right? You’re like, well, I guess I should burn up eight minutes talking through what we’re gonna talk about and have a meeting about the meeting.

And I hate those kinds of meetings. 

[00:13:36] David Orbuch: And it happens all the time. Why? Because that’s the way other people have done it when, you know, I used to do my one-on-ones with my, my team, they used to be an hour. Everyone was set for an hour. Why? Well, because one-on-ones last an hour and everyone was like, oh God, I gotta spend an hour with David.

And then I changed it up. I said, let’s do 30 minute one-on-ones. Let’s be intentional about creating energy and focus. ’cause my thinking was, if I do 30 minute meetings, we’re gonna really be focused. Now, there were two conditions to those meetings. One was the person I was meeting with had to ascend the agenda to meet their agenda.

Um, within 24 hours before the meeting, I had to send back any feedback I had about that agenda, you know, two to three hours before the meeting so that he or she could be prepared. So the thinking was, oh, we already have the agenda and the purpose of the meeting was, how can I make that person even more effective than they are?

Because that’s what a meeting’s supposed to be about. It’s not supposed to be updates. Send me an email if you wanna give me an update. But it’s really about what’s. What rocks are in your way that I can help push away. And so those meetings that turned out to started out to be an hour were a focus 30 minutes.

And they were so much more effective 

[00:15:02] Charles Eide: when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. ’cause we all do, right? We sometimes you have a bad night’s sleep and you just wake up and you don’t have the energy you normally do, but you still have to go have one-on-ones or have, you know, important meetings. What are some things that you do that help you get into the right head space so that you’re not bringing negative energy to your team?

So a 

[00:15:28] David Orbuch: real good question is how, you know, your energy determines other people’s energy. Um, and if there’s something, you know, if you go into a meeting and everyone’s like, oh, this is gonna be a boring meeting and you know, uh, no one’s gonna like it. You have the power to change that. So leverage that.

Because remember the difference between time and energy? Everyone says, oh, this meeting’s gotta be for an hour, or there’s 24 hours in a day. I got so much work to do. Energy is limitless. You control not time. You can’t even, you Charles can’t put 25 hours in a day. Okay? But what you can do is lift your energy up and build up other people’s energy.

So the way you do that is you change things around. If I wake up on the other side of the bed or I have a crank in my neck, I start my day the same way I work out every morning. ’cause that’s gonna build my energy. Okay. That then allows me to bring that workout energy into my work. You know, we’re going back to the shadow, we’re gonna get back to that.

But when do you think your shadow is the strongest, the brightest? 

[00:16:43] Charles Eide: What time of the day? I mean, for me it’s the morning, right? I, I like you, I like working out in the morning. ’cause I, um, you know, everything’s warmed up and I, you know, come into a 9:00 AM meeting already spooled up. And so if you go 

[00:16:55] David Orbuch: outside, your shadow is the longest, the brightest at the start of the day and the end of the day.

Yeah. Because that’s where the sun is not on top of you. The sun’s on top of you, you have very little shadow. So the key part of your leadership shadow is the beginning of the day. You’ve gotta come in and you’ve gotta be intentional to say, my energy is going to impact everyone in my organization and my shadow can create better business results.

So I better have the energy at the beginning of the day. So when you get there in the morning. Why not go around and 

[00:17:30] Building Your Shadow: Passion

[00:17:30] David Orbuch: connect with people, show them that you, Hey Jim, I heard that you did this great job yesterday. Thank you very much. Or Sarah, I heard that you’re having a couple issues. What can I do to help you?

Because your shadow is bright there. And at the end of the day, thanking, appreciation, showing them that you know what you are with them. This is part of the team. So remember that we haven’t even got to fully what your shadow is, but it’s brightest at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. Use that, leverage that to drive your organization’s performance.

[00:18:03] Charles Eide: Yeah. I love getting in early. I love getting in early. Uh, I get in about seven 30 and I love being the last one out the door. ’cause I, first of all, you can send people off with a smile, right? And if people are encountering challenges throughout the day, the end of the day is where they’re like kind of.

Trying to bring them to a head or, you know, close ’em out. And I love to walk around. I mean, 4 35 o’clock. I love doing a lap around and just seeing how people are doing. 

[00:18:30] David Orbuch: That’s great. When I ran a hospital, we used to have pancakes. I used to make pancakes in the morning for people because I love that kind of connection.

You know, we had peach Snapple day and we used to hand out peach Snapple. Why? Because peach Snapple is the drink of god’s. And under every, every cover for peach Snapple, it has a really interesting fact. So again, do things that bring energy to your organization, not because it’s like someone told you, but that you want your shadow to be cast brightly at the beginning of the day.

You want to say things and do things. ’cause the third part of your shadow is what are you gonna prioritize? What’s important to you? What do people see you doing? Are you, if you say, uh, appreciation is the glue that connects their organization, do you show appreciation? Do you write notes? If you are doing your meetings, I had a boss who said, everybody’s gotta have a one-on-one with me once a week.

And then you’d get there, they’d prioritize the one-on-one, but then they’d be doing their emails all, you know, while you there. Or someone would come in and, and all of a sudden, you know it, you weren’t important. So what they said, yes, meetings, what they did, they actually scheduled them, but when they prioritized that time, it wasn’t about you.

So part of your shadow is what you prioritize, okay? And then what you measure. Okay? So if you believe values are important, that culture is important, then it isn’t just the what. Okay? The results you got. But it’s also the how. So are you asking your team to evaluate their employees based upon the how are people living our values?

If you think that mentoring is important, are people mentoring each other? And if you have a sales team, sure. The bottom line is you gotta get those sales in. But how are they doing it? Are they bringing others along with them to show them what’s critical it is. So again, your shadow is what you say, what you do, what you prioritize, and then how you measure it at the end 

[00:20:37] Charles Eide: of the year.

How do you measure stuff like that? You know, I mean, it’s easy to measure sales metrics. It’s easy to measure certain things. Some of those other things, it’s how, how do you measure ’em? It’s a 

[00:20:48] David Orbuch: real good question, and unless you’re intentional about it, it doesn’t work. But there are organizations that are intentional about their values all the time because they take the value of integrity and they say, okay, what does it mean in practice?

How is it going to work? And then they take behavioral expectations for integrity and they say, okay, has that person acted with integrity? If it’s about, um, uh, if you have a, a value of respect, okay, are you respecting your colleagues and do they respect you? And so sometimes you gotta do evaluation about that.

So what, what does it mean? It, it could mean something as simple as creating behavioral expectations for each value and then talking about them living them. Um, and then evaluating people at the end of the year based upon that. But each organization, the fund, or the intentionality of it is taking those values and creating those behavioral expectations underneath them so that they’re unique to your organization and the work that you do.

And lemme just tell you one last thing, which is what makes up a shadow. So what you say, what you do, what you measure, what you prioritize, and then lastly, what you permit. This is one that often people forget because if you say all these things are important, but you permit that bad actor in your business because they’re getting short term results.

People are gonna, it doesn’t make a difference about how we live our values. It’s really about the results we get. Which performance could be a value in your organization. That’s critical. All of this is connected to performance. But you know, I worked in an organization where we had an actor who got great short term results, but did it in a way that destroyed everybody else in their path.

They were all about themselves getting the bottom line, you know, sales and anybody stood in their path. They didn’t they, that language they used, the 

[00:22:59] Full Engagement Across Life

[00:22:59] David Orbuch: way they treated people internally. If they needed support in the sales function, they would yell and scream. But man, at the end of the year, they did pretty well year after year.

That person was staying in the organization and getting bonuses until we started thinking about what we’re permitting this bad behavior. When we’re saying we’re doing the right things. What kind of a shadow is that? Casting? Finally because we recognize that disparity, that person was let go. 

[00:23:35] Charles Eide: Hi. Okay, so this brings up a really important topic that I want to get into just briefly.

You’ve got a high performer, but they’re not a nice person and they create a lot of collateral damage. But let’s say they’re in sales and they’re creating the result that they were hired to create. How do you, how do you 

[00:23:57] David Orbuch: proceed? You let ’em go. ’cause it’s not just the what, it’s the how. If that’s what you believe.

It’s, that’s part of your organization culture. Because long term, that person’s going to do more damage than the short term success. When people, when you say they’re doing damage. I’ve seen people like this in organization, the morale of the rest of the organization takes a huge dip because that person is not only getting results, they’re getting accolades for it.

You have bonuses, bonuses, and you were like, well, I guess that’s the way I have to act. I have to tramp trample other people. I have to be bitchy and mean, and, and angry, and you know, demanding, demanding long term. Your culture is going to fail as a result of that, and you’re gonna have employees leave and the cost of rehiring people.

You’re gonna have people say, well, I’m, you know what? This is just a job. This is not a passion. That leader that I’m working for, shadow is not one that I wanna believe in. They’re saying things that are important, but you know what? They’re permitting bad behavior. What, when, when you 

[00:25:11] Charles Eide: have this epiphany, let’s say you’re listening to this right now and you’re like thinking of a person on your team or in your company, how do you go about, before you just fire ’em?

You obviously, if they’re impactful like that, you give them, you give, you talk to ’em. Yeah. How do you, how do you communicate like. Hey, your performance is great, but the, the attitude ain’t working. Bingo. 

[00:25:34] David Orbuch: You just did it. I mean, one of the things that we are afraid of as leaders is to say what we really believe, and you go to a leader and say, you know, you’ve really gotten amazing results this past year, but you’ve destroyed everybody in your path and that’s harming the rest of the organization.

I really want you to stay and continue to perform like you’re doing, but not the way you’re doing it. Is that something that you can change? Do you even understand what you are doing to get the results that you’re doing? How 

[00:26:05] Charles Eide: often do you see people like, you know, explain to that. They’re like, oh my gosh, I didn’t know that people felt that way about me.

Or do they usually 

[00:26:15] David Orbuch: know? I think they usually know. What they don’t recognize is that, you know, and that you’re going to hold them accountable for the behavior that is critical to the long-term success of your organization. Why? Because they’ve been very successful their entire life doing what they’re doing.

How often do they actually change? You know, I’m gonna give people the benefit of the doubt. Benefit of the doubt, but only for a short period of time. Um, I think it’s hard to change your behavior when you have been rewarded for bad behavior. You know, just think about the little kids, you know, like if, if, if they throw a fit and you, uh, give them candy, they know they can get candy by throwing a fit, so they start throwing a fit.

I mean, we’ve all had little kids do that, and you’ve gotta change the dynamic, the behavioral expectations as a result of that. But. In the long term, the health of your organization is more critical than that short term success. And you’ll find that the next person who steps into that person’s shoes will be more effective and the whole team will breathe a sigh of, I mean, I’ve had it, and I know we had a medical director in an organization that I worked with who would just trample people who would yell at people, who would say, you know, you’re not listening to me.

And finally I had to say, this ain’t working. Um, even though you are bright and you are capable and you got a great vision, nobody wants to work with you. And so we gotta mix things up. And they’re no longer, they were no longer part of the organization, so they 

[00:27:52] Charles Eide: didn’t wanna put in the change, or they weren’t capable of putting in the work to change.

They 

[00:27:56] David Orbuch: didn’t believe it was necessary because they had been successful. I mean, most of the people that we work with have been successful based upon the behaviors they learned and. They, it’s hard to unlearn them, but not impossible. 

[00:28:09] Charles Eide: Yeah. Maybe they need to just go find a culture that tolerates that and is a culture of, you know, that toxic stuff.

[00:28:15] David Orbuch: Yeah. And you know what? There are organizations that have toxic employees in there, and guess what happens? Everyone tries to run from those organizations that come to an organization that doesn’t have it, that wants people and that wants to create a healthy, high performing culture. And that’s the key.

If you know, the research shows overwhelmingly that if you create a healthy, high performing culture, you’re going to outperform those that don’t have it. And there are elements to that culture. One of the key ones is, let’s go back to your leadership shadow. That’s the thing that’s so amazing that people don’t realize is you get to, as a leader, control the culture of the organization.

You set the standards because 

[00:28:59] Accountability: The Key Driver

[00:28:59] David Orbuch: people are all going to listen to what you say, what you do, what you prioritize, et. Then the question comes, if leadership shadow is so important, how do I build my leadership shadow? Like what do I do to be intentional about it rather than just know what, what’s included in it?

What do I do? And the first thing you gotta do is be passionate about what you do. Because the fascinating thing is people follow people who are passionate about their job. Why? Because they bring energy, they bring excitement, they bring the why. You know what? A lot of people work simply to for a paycheck, which is a critical, which is important.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Yet those people who can connect their paycheck to a higher why are going to give you their discretionary effort, are gonna be more energized, they’re gonna be more excited, and are going to be committed to the organization. And how do they who? Who do you think they follow about that passion?

It’s the leader. And you, you know what? You gotta be passionate about what you do. If you’re a leader, it could be because you’re putting on amazing events. It could be because you’re saving people’s lives. It could be because you’re building buildings. It could be because you run an institution that’s providing technology, that is helping people in their everyday lives.

My why doesn’t have to be your why or somebody else’s why, but the leader has to show their mission, drive their purpose, and that’s the number one. Are you bringing that passion? 

[00:30:42] Charles Eide: Wow. Okay. What do you say to people who have a passion for something, but they don’t have any talent in that passion? 

[00:30:48] David Orbuch: You’re the, you’re the wrong leader for that organization.

You’re not, um, you’re not aligned with the business. Yeah. So not, I mean, you know what? You gotta find your passion. I work with a lot of leaders who went into a business or a profession because, um, you know, they thought that was the sensible thing to do, whether it was financial results or their parents always wanted them to be an accountant or, you know, they took over the family business, but they’re not passionate about it.

And I say to them, you know what? You’re in the wrong business. You’re not leading the right business if you don’t show it. If you don’t believe it, you’re not going to be successful. And you know what I get. Why passionate non, you know, people stay in jobs that they’re not passionate about because it’s, it’s a paycheck.

But what I say to people is, you know what, if you follow your passion, you’ll never go hungry. You may not always be full, you may not be as wealthy as you would be if you continued in the family business, but you’re not gonna ever experience that connection to what you’re doing. You know what? We work a hundred thousand hours in our lifetime, approximately a hundred thousand hours, and you get to go to that place, and you’re not gonna be passionate about what you’re doing.

You’re not gonna be excited about what you’re accomplishing. No go change. You’re gonna be, you’re gonna be better, happier 

[00:32:18] Charles Eide: if you do. And there’s a position somewhere out there for that leader to be passionate somewhere. They just have to look. 

[00:32:26] David Orbuch: And it’s never too late to find that passion. It’s never too late.

I know a bunch of people that I work with who are, you know, in professions and they have been doing these jobs because it just made sense. They went to law school and you know, they became a lawyer and now they’re just doing litigation the whole time. And they’re like, ha, it’s not something I enjoy doing.

Well, you’re never too old. Change it up. And they’re worried about, well, I don’t know if I can start something new. And what about financial considerations? I get all that, all important things that you’ve gotta list out. But what’s even more important is the passion that you bring to the work. Because it’s a hundred thousand hours of your life, you might as well do something.

[00:33:11] Charles Eide: Well, I, when you’re talking about this, I’m thinking about leaders of leaders, you know, like a CEO, who has a management team, who has managers underneath. And when you notice a leader on your team isn’t passionate. Do, do you think that that’s something that can be fixed or is it like, you know, we should probably part ways with that person?

They’re not passionate. I need to do them. The service of helping them move on. 

[00:33:39] David Orbuch: I think first and foremost, the leader of the organization has to be passionate. If you bring that passion and someone who works for you, doesn’t connect with that, doesn’t connect with your why, then they may not be the right fit.

Um, and sometimes it’s tough for people to see that themselves and they’re like, well, it’s, I hear all the time, it’s just a job. Like I go there nine to five and I do my thing, but it doesn’t need to bring me passion because I have other things outside of work. I get that. I think that’s rational. It’s not someone that I want to work for me.

I want to, when I worked for hospitals, I wanted people who believed this was an amazing job because they got to help people when they’re the most vulnerable. When I had a bad day running hospital, what did I do? I went to the, uh, you know, the, the, uh, visitor room and talk to people whose loved ones were in the hospital.

And I thought, my God, my bad day is minuscule to what they’re doing. And even though I don’t have any medical background or clinical background, I get to help people who are vulnerable. And that if I can’t communicate that to the people that I’m working with, that’s a problem that I have. I’m thinking about 

[00:34:58] Charles Eide: when you’re a customer and you encounter someone that’s working in a job and they’re so passionate about.

What they’re doing. It is, it is refreshing and energizing. No matter if it’s a, you know, wait staff at a restaurant, you betcha, or a store clerk or a vendor you’re working with. When you see that that person is passionate being the customer, it’s, it’s so powerful. It makes you want to work with them or buy from them or spend more money or because you’re like, oh my gosh, the passion is still alive.

Like, you got it. This person isn’t just, you know, dead inside. 

[00:35:35] David Orbuch: Go buy a car from a salesperson who’s passionate. Go to a hotel where the person who welcomes you to the hotel is passionate. I go to work out and the health club, the person who, when they check me in, say, hi, David, hope you have a great workout.

I’m like, she likes her job, and already I have been lifted on what I call the mood elevator and I’m feeling better already. Those are the 

[00:35:59] Dealing with High Performers Who Aren’t Nice

[00:35:59] David Orbuch: people I want around me. Now again, this is not just like, oh, fake passion. This is about, are you connecting with what you’re doing a hundred thousand hours of your life?

If you look at it that way, you say, okay, maybe I don’t need as much money, or maybe I don’t need the, the, the biggest house. What I need is something that I, I’m just driven to succeed in. The next thing for a leader who can build their, um, leadership shadow is to be fully engaged. Are you a fully engaged leader?

And this is a little bit of a tricky one because the research shows that a fully engaged leader is fully engaged in three parts of their life, not just at work. They’re engaged at work. They’re engaged at home and they’re engaged in the community. You know, the book, the Power of Full Engagement, has this great, um, research based methodology that those leaders who are most successful are those that are fully engaged in those three parts of our life.

And often we think of the leader that works a hundred hours a week and who’s there morning, noon, and night. Those are the ones who are the most successful. It’s not true. Those are ones who burn themselves out and burn out their employees. If. You are fully engaged at work, not, you know what, some days you’re gonna have to pull those long hours.

You got a client, you on a flight, you gotta do those things. But if you’re fully engaged at work, but you’re fully engaged at home, you’re connected with whatever that home life is for you. It could be, it could be, you know, parents, it could be a spouse, it could be children, no value judgment, but that you have a family life that you’re connected to.

And most importantly, or as important in your community, because a fully engaged leader is humble. And what that means, isn’t that, oh, I think less of myself, okay. Oh, I’m not as good as I should be. Oh, I don’t know. I’m not as smart. That’s not humility. Humility is recognizing that you are not the center of the universe.

And the reason your business is going to be successful is because we have a strong and thriving community. So I’m not judging where you should be involved in the community. But as a business leader, I believe you owe a responsibility to the community in which your business is in to help it thrive.

Because otherwise, you’re not gonna get the employees, you’re not gonna get people buying your product. You’re not gonna be able to have safe and secure community because you’re not involved and engaged in it. So your responsibility is to get involved in your community, in whatever community you define it.

It could be religious, it could be civic, it could be the arts doesn’t make a difference. But by being involved in all three parts of your life, by being engaged in them, your business will be more successful, your shadow will be larger, and your leadership will be stronger. Okay. So 

[00:39:08] Charles Eide: when you’re talking about passion, right, and obviously being passionate at home, work, community are really important.

How do you think that impacts trust? The trust people have in you? When you have passion or you don’t? 

[00:39:22] David Orbuch: I think it depends how you show that passion. If you show that passion kind of in a fake way, in a, um, cotton candy way, we’re like, oh, everything’s great. And you hoo And even when things are bad, you’re like, we’re still gonna survive.

You know, the trust isn’t there. But if people see that you are really connected, that you’re there at the end of the day, when I was a prosecutor, okay, we had to get, um, pleadings to the court. At the end of the day, I was the secretary or the assistant. I was the, you know, the prosecutor and I was the person who brought it there.

’cause it didn’t make a difference what your title was. We all had to get the work done. This is the days where we actually had a mimeograph, you know, our pleadings and, and when you made a mistake on one, you had to use whiteout for the other two. That’s how old I am. But the key was, we’re a team. Sure there are different responsibilities in an organization, but do people all understand their role in the overall success?

When President Kennedy went to nasa, one of my favorite things, and he said to the person that he met sweeping the floors, what do you do? You know what that person said, that janitor said, I help put people on the moon. Like, look at that connection. Look at that passion. Look at that excitement that that person who had a critical job at nasa, but they believed what they were doing, were connected to the overall mission.

So if you can get and create that passion with people and it’s real, and you know what? Sometimes passion is negative passion. We get it’s stress. We got a client who’s in trouble. We, we provided, or we committed to, you know, get them X on this date and we’re gonna have to work harder. There’s a leader I know in town who has this amazing client sent something to the client and they’re like, this is not up to your standard and we need you to redo it in three days.

And he spent those three days, 24 7 getting that product up to speed. And everybody knew, everybody knew in the organization that this was critical, but he was passionate about it. Not in a cotton candy way, but in this is who we serve this. And people recognize that that’s what passion means. It’s not always positive, but it’s providing energy to get the job done.

[00:41:50] Charles Eide: Okay, so there’s four elements. Mm-hmm. Passion. The next one is engagement. Engagement. Tell me about that. 

[00:41:57] David Orbuch: So that’s where you engage in all parts of your life. So, um, home. Work and community. The next one is actually, the third one is really about accountability, which is really, are you holding yourself accountable and are you holding others accountable?

So we start with, are you passionate to build your shadow? Second one was, um, uh, engagement. Are you fully engaged? And the third is about accountability. Now, accountability, we often think of incorrectly. We think of, um, retrospective accountability, which is something got screwed up. Who’s the blame? I was in an organization and the leader used to say, whose throat can I choke for the failure?

What, what does that look like? Like, really? But that’s the language. And it was said with some humor. But even when we were looking at like, you know, a goal, okay, if it doesn’t work, whose throat can I choke? Okay. That’s about blame. I love the comment that when you point your finger at somebody and say you are to blame, there’s three fingers pointing back at you.

And I think about that all the time. When I try to think about someone’s responsible. When we had a medical error at a hospital that I was working at, and you know what I did? The doctor said it wasn’t my fault. It’s the nurse’s fault. The nurse said, it wasn’t my fault. It’s the tech’s fault. The tech’s fault said I, I got, I, I don’t know.

You know what I said as the hospital president, it’s my fault because it probably was. We didn’t have a system set up correctly to prevent that medical error. So blaming retrospectively does nothing. Accountability is about prospective action. What more can I do to get better results? What more can we do to get better results?

So when I talk about. Accountability. The first thing I have to do is, am I holding myself accountable for the shadow I’m creating for the intentional shadow I’m trying to achieve for the culture I’m building in the organization? Am I saying things and doing things and prioritizing things and measuring the right things?

Because don’t start blaming your team that the, you know that, that you’re not getting the results you want. Start looking at yourself in the mirror. So accountability is critical, first and foremost to yourself. It’s the number one driver for business success in an organization, which is really interesting.

Harvard Business Review says, you know what’s, what are key drivers of business success? People say, oh, communication or financial outcomes, or trust. Really, it’s about accountability. Are you holding yourself accountable for the culture you’re trying to create, your shadow, et cetera. Once you feel comfortable that you’re holding yourself accountable, then it’s about how do I hold my team accountable?

And in order to do that, are there clear expectations? Do people know what, um, good outcomes look like? Are we looking at the outcomes on a regular basis and saying, wait a minute, what’s, what are the barriers in our way? Are we going to achieve those successes? And then you can start holding your team accountable and you can help them get the results they need.

That’s the key. And then all of a sudden they realize, wait a minute, I’m being held accountable. Am I holding my team accountable? And it’s not doing their job? If you have to hold them accountable by doing their job, you got someone in the wrong spot. It’s about making sure that they have the resources to effectively accomplish the goal.

[00:45:54] Charles Eide: So it makes me wonder about, you have a leader who’s always, uh, you know, taken the blame for something that happened on their team, that’s great, but it happens over and over again, and they never, they never help their team take accountability. How can, how can, how can I help others take accountability and know that it’s not, you know, doesn’t mean they’re a bad person, doesn’t mean they’re gonna get fired, right?

Because I think fear’s a big driver of f running away from accountability, right? How do I empower others 

[00:46:29] The Power of Mentorship and Peer Groups

[00:46:29] Charles Eide: to, to feel like they can take responsibility when they need to? 

[00:46:34] David Orbuch: Well. First, I’ll start with the story ’cause it’s one of my favorite accountability stories and it happened to me. So I told you I was a prosecutor for the US Attorney’s Office in DC and I worked for an amazing attorney general at that time, Janet Reno.

And I was fairly new and I was given a big case and I filed a motion and the motion was denied. It was denied because I screwed up. I made a mistake and the attorney General of the United States wanted to meet with me and I was like, oh my God, I’m in trouble. I’m gonna be fired. So you must have been sweating bullets.

I, oh my gosh. Sweating bullets. And I went with my boss. We went to, uh, Janet Reno’s office, which is a whole different story, but really cool. She was actually, um, housed in the assistant or the secretary’s part of the office because the real big office she said was too big for her. So she, she had her office right when you walked in ’cause that’s where the secretary would’ve been in.

And the other big office is where the secretary was. It was just really fascinating about how she saw herself as a servant leader. But I walk in and she says hi to my boss. We had not met, you know, I didn’t know. Do you shake the attorney General’s hands? Do you call her? You know, Madame Attorney General?

What do you do? I had practiced all that. So you like nervous? Oh my God. Sweating bullets. ’cause I’m a young new prosecutor and she says to the two of us, myself and my boss. And my boss is there with me. And we didn’t, you know, we talked a little bit about what went wrong, but we didn’t, we didn’t rehearse what we were going to say.

And she said, my first question is, is. What happened, what went wrong? And I’m about to say I blew it. I screwed up. And as I’m about to do it, I hear my boss saying it was my fault. I made a mistake. And I looked at him, I’m like, what’s going on? Am I like dreaming this? And he says, you know, I’m David’s supervisor.

I didn’t have time to review his motion. Um, I should have, um, but things got busy and I’ll do better the next time. And Janet, Rita looked at me and looked at him and said, terrific, thank you very much. I appreciate that accountability. And we walked out and I said like, what did you do? He goes, it’s true.

It was my accountability. I said, but I was the one who screwed up. He goes, yeah, but I’m your boss. You know what I would’ve done for that boss? I would’ve walked over fire for him because he said he was accountable for my heir. And so, what do you think I did? When I went back to the office, I made sure I double checked and triple checked.

I made sure I asked other people, what do you think? Am I doing this correctly? Is, you know, is there anything I’m missing? And then I would start holding as a leader, other people accountable. So again, the short answer to your really important question is if you demonstrate leadership accountability in a positive prospective way, the people on your team will understand that, feel loyal to you, feel connected, and they will model that on an ongoing basis.

And if they don’t, then you got the wrong person. Sometimes people will always say, the dog ate my homework, the dog ate my homework. Those are not people you want in your organization because guess what? It ain’t the dog’s fault you left your homework. You know, on the ground, on the couch, uh, you know, when you had written the paper.

You’re 16 years old, you can put it in a folder and put it in your backpack before you go to bed. First time you can say. Oh gosh. What was the lessons you learned after that? If it keeps on happening again, then you may not have the right person. 

[00:50:17] Charles Eide: I’m sure the amount of respect you had for that leader just went through the roof when you walked out of that office.

I mean, you must have been like, oh my gosh. Like I want to be like that. Not 

[00:50:28] David Orbuch: only do I wanna be like that, but he, the vision of that leader still lives in my mind. Like when you work for an amazing leader, not only do you appreciate that person, but you wanna be like that person. And if we as leaders talk about our legacy isn’t that we want what we want, don’t we want people who look at us and say, wow, there are attributes of that person that I aspire to be like, I still.

Follow that leader’s career path. And he has been extremely successful. And I think to myself, wow, look what he’s taught me. And not only what he taught me, I’m hopeful that I try to model the things that he taught me to the people that I lead and on and on and on. And to me, like that’s leadership legacy.

That’s a shadow that if I cast correctly, could help. Our community can help. You know what? We have so many problems in our society. Leaders are a key, uh, piece of the puzzle. And if they can cast a positive shadow, we can solve some of these problems together. I think about when 

[00:51:50] Charles Eide: you have these models of leaders in your mind, right?

Like this person you’re talking about. It makes me wanna ask you about how important is it to have mentors that you can learn from, and how important is it to be surrounded by other leaders you can look up to? 

[00:52:11] David Orbuch: Yeah, really good question. I think mentors are critical. Um, a responsibility for a leader is to mentor others, sometimes formally, sometimes informally.

Another huge opportunity are peer groups. You know, I never had a peer group when I was, you know, 30 to 64, um, and I didn’t really even know what they were. I just started leading to peer groups for soar. And the amazing thing about it was, I, I, I am so impressed at how powerful they are. You get 12 leaders in a room.

And most leaders have the same issues. You know, it’s about confidence, it’s about performance, it’s about growth, it’s about strategy. It’s about, you know, when do I take action? And you get 12 leaders together and they’re sharing their concerns. The results of that are incredible. They not only become friends, they learn from each other.

And I only wish that I would’ve had that for the past 30 years. But watching these leaders connect in a way that’s so powerful and learn from each other is another thing about, you know, having a group of people that you can connect with and share and be honest and, and bring your whole self to that isn’t necessarily the people you work with on a day-to-day basis.

Is really helpful to the performance of your leadership shadow. 

[00:53:45] Charles Eide: Yeah, I love that. I’ve been a part of a peer group for, uh, going on 12 years and being a part of SOAR has been huge for me. You obviously being a major mentor as my leader in that group has been a game changer. I always joke that gold bars just fall out of your mouth even on accident, but I agree.

Being surrounded by people who give different perspectives on the same issues, you know, it’s just so powerful. Okay. So the fourth one you mentioned? Yeah, 

[00:54:11] David Orbuch: there’s one more and it comes down to integrity. All of these words that I’ve said are important, but if you don’t live them, if you don’t act them, integrity is doing what you say and saying what you do.

It’s really simple, you know? Um, 

[00:54:29] Integrity: Walking the Talk

[00:54:29] David Orbuch: if you say you’re gonna have an intentional leadership shadow and you’re gonna work on it, then you gotta go work on it, you know? There’s this old story about somebody who wanted to learn to play guitar, and every six months they’d say, I wanna learn to play guitar. I really wanna learn to play guitar.

But they never bought a guitar. They never found a teacher. They never understood what it meant. It’s like, it’s just words like, stop saying it. Shut up. I tell people all the time, just like, shut up. You know, either do it or don’t do it. And being intentional about all this, understanding that if you have a strong shadow, your business is going to be stronger.

It’s not just about who you are, it’s about what you do. So integrity is taking all this and practicing it, working on it. I’m a big journaler a believer in journaling. Like write down what you think your shadow is today and what you want it to be tomorrow. How are you gonna get from here to there? You know?

You know when the best time to plant an apple tree is? Yeah. 10 years ago. 10 years ago. You betcha. And the second best time. Right now. Right now. So get that journal out, figure out what is your shadow today. And if you need to ask people, you know, and it doesn’t need to be a survey of an organization, but sit down with your direct reports one-on-one, and you say, you know what?

How do I show up for you? What’s working? How can I be even more effective in supporting you to be successful? And if they say, oh, just keep on doing what you’re doing. You didn’t ask the question enough times. No, really? How can I be even more effective? And they may say, well, okay, just communicate with me more.

No, no, no, no, no. I get all that. You gotta ask a question three or four times, how can I be even more effective? How can I show up better? And you’re gonna start finally believing people’s words because they’re going to think that you’re really listening to them and they’re going to say what you think and doesn’t mean you have to do everything.

All of this is not like, Ooh, once someone tells me that this is what they want, you know, Ooh, I want you to double my salary. You can say no, or I want you to, you know, be in the office more. You can say no, but if they say things that can help them be even more successful, take it in. How am I showing up?

Take it in. Once you start getting a sense of how you’re leading both at work. At home and then leveraging this in the community. Last thing that I think is really important about the community I organizations who are big organizations that are IT organizations or health organizations or they’re businesses that have a huge skills in certain specific ways, and they say, okay, let’s go do a community project and we’re going to serve the homeless by making sandwiches.

I think, you know, great. I really do think that’s okay, but how about leveraging your skills, your expertise and technology for a nonprofit organization in your community? How about creating a relationship with that organization that helps them get stronger as you get stronger? So building up those relationships.

That is going to show that you actually have integrity, that you are building the building blocks that are going to strengthen your shadow, your business and the community that we’re in, that we are so thankful for because they allow us to have a thriving business. 

[00:58:12] Charles Eide: Yeah, that’s so interesting that you say the community part of it.

’cause it’s, you know, I think the family, the faith and the business ones are so obvious, but I always think, oh, well I, I guess I could go work in a soup kitchen for, you know, a few hours a week, but you had a really good point and that’s that my gifts are better served, helping them develop systems or running the business better or raising more money in sales, or using my specific talent.

To help the community, not just, you know, scooping soup, I guess. 

[00:58:49] David Orbuch: Right? And, you know, there, there’s nothing wrong with scooping soup because it, it, it shows that it matters, but it’s not that effective for you or for them. And what they really need as a partner. So, be partners. I mean, I wrote this down. Great leaders cast shadows that stretch across teams.

Customers, because customers wanna work with great leaders and communities. And those leaders that have the strongest shadows have the strongest results. So again, start journaling if you’re not getting the results you want at your work. Why is that? What are the reasons and how is your shadow implicating that?

Don’t always focus in on the results. Focus in on your thinking. ’cause the last model is your thinking determines your behaviors. Determines your results. Let’s go back to that meeting. If your thinking is, this is going to be a crappy meeting, and so your behaviors are, oh God, I can’t wait till it’s done and I’m gonna start with the agenda and I’m gonna be doing my emails.

Why the leaders there? Your behaviors are, guess what happens? The results are, it’s a crappy meeting. If your thinking is this is going to be a dynamic 30 minute meeting where we’re going to get things done, then your behaviors are there. Okay, let’s go. And then the results of the meeting are that same thing with your shadow.

If you thinking is your shadow isn’t important, the shadow you cast, it just is what it is. No. If you think that the shadow you cast can be intentional, then your behaviors will be, how can I build my shadow? How can I focus on the things that we talked about today? And guess what happens when you do that?

You get better results. And that’s the key for any leader. Is to get the results that you intend to get. 

[01:00:40] Charles Eide: I think it’s so fun when you say those things because it’s, you’ve, we’ve heard the old adage whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. But the behavior part is so big too, right?

You have a meeting and you go into the meeting with a bad attitude. What do you get a bad result? Well, you chose that, right? You go into the meeting with a good attitude, you get a good result. Yeah. It’s like whatever you choose is what you’re gonna get. 

[01:01:05] David Orbuch: You know? I use this as a parent also. If your child says, I wanna play college soccer, but they’re not getting good grades, and you say to them, Hey, if you don’t get good grades, you know, I’m not gonna give you, uh, an allowance or I’m not gonna give you homework.

What does that do? Very little. ’cause you’re focusing in on the results. If you focus in on their thinking and change their thinking and you say, well, wait a minute, you know what? If you wanna play college soccer. Typically someone else has to tell them that because they don’t listen to their own parent.

You gotta get better grades. What they’re going to do is they change their thinking and then they’re going to change their behavior. What change their behavior. They’ll study and typically when someone studies, they get better grades. So their thinking initially was grades don’t matter. Their behavior was, I don’t study the results.

So they got bad grades. If you change their thinking and they said, wait a minute, grades matter ’cause I wanna get a college scholarship for soccer. They then say, Ooh, my behavior is to study. And then I get better grades. And guess what happens? They get the college scholarship. So these things that I talk about aren’t just for your leadership at home, it’s also for you as a parent and a spouse and as a, as a family member and as a community member, if you say the community is critical.

If you are humble enough to believe that the community is critical to your business success, okay. Then what do you have to do? Your behavior has to show it. If you say, oh no, I’m so smart. The reason my business is a su success is ’cause I work harder than everybody else, or I’m smarter than everybody else, the community doesn’t matter.

You’re not. And then what happens? You’re all of a sudden your business is in a community that is not thriving. If you’re thinking is the community is part of my business success, then your behavior has to show it. And guess what happens? If your behavior shows it and you connect with a community organization that’s doing great things, the results are good for you and for that community organization.

[01:03:07] Charles Eide: So as a leader, what, what are the things we, we must do to be 

[01:03:13] David Orbuch: good 

[01:03:14] Charles Eide: leaders? 

[01:03:15] David Orbuch: One of the things that, um, I always want in a leader is to be able to make those decisions and not delay. And I would rather have my leader make mistakes, but allow us to continue to 

[01:03:29] The Hospital Crisis: A Leadership Test

[01:03:29] David Orbuch: move forward than make decisions. And it takes a month because then we just lose energy.

And I think a good leader has to recognize that they’re not gonna get it all right. And if they tell their team that they’re not gonna get it all right? But they’re gonna make a decision and allow their team to say, wait a minute, maybe you didn’t make the right decision. Let’s course correct and fall forward and move forward.

Hmm. And so I would rather make a decision, even if it’s not a hundred percent accurate, have the team know that they can influence the results of that. And let’s get moving than the malaise of just, oh my God, over and over and over debating the same thing. It drives me nuts. 

[01:04:14] Charles Eide: So part of that is you talk about developing people.

Mm-hmm. What does that mean, and how much effort should you be thinking about developing people? 

[01:04:28] David Orbuch: I think the best leaders spend 25% of their time on developing leaders. If you’re gonna be a leader, you’ve gotta understand that. The people you work with are critical to your success. So what does that mean?

That means you’ve got to make sure that people are in the right seats. You gotta under that they understand the culture of the organization, that people are, um, appreciating the values of the organization, that when they fall, they’re someone to catch them and teach them how to do better. And so that’s about development.

It’s about making sure you have the right people on the bus, because if you don’t, you’ll never go anywhere on that bus worth going. And leaders think, well, that’s somebody else’s responsibility. That’s my HR leader’s responsibility. Or, no, it’s yours. It’s yours to make sure that the people fit what you’re trying to achieve.

And you gotta make, again, going back to the first one, making the right decisions. Sometimes you hire an employee who doesn’t work out and you know it. If you read the book, blink. I’m a blink person where I know pretty quickly whether I made the right choice. The hard part is acting on that blink to say, wait a minute.

Hmm, I made a mistake. I think I’ve gotta make that change. Make it, and everyone around you will appreciate that, even if sometimes, once again, you did it wrong, but you do it compassionately and respectfully and you are clear about why you’re doing it. That makes sense. And so that’s why I think one-on-ones are important.

Having your team understand that you’re there for them. Being at the front of the bus when you got a problem. Not at the back of the bus saying, okay, who’s, who’s xeroxing the documents? No, you are. I don’t care if that’s not your role, we gotta get something done. I used that example again of a leader that I met recently who was amazing.

You know, the client didn’t love the product that they produced and they said, we’ll fix it. They said, well, you gotta fix it pretty quickly. You don’t got much time. And he at the front of the bus said, okay, I’ll do it. And went back and spent weekend doing it and got what the client, what they needed.

[01:06:46] Charles Eide: That’s such a good lesson because sometimes you, you don’t want to impose on your team when something maybe wasn’t perfect, but to have a team that trusts you enough that when you say, Hey. We gotta get, we gotta fix this. We missed the mark, and I take responsibility with you, but let’s put our heads down and work to get this done.

Whether it’s, you know, three days or whatever they’ve got. You got it. But I think it’s, I think like you were saying, it starts with the ability to have them trusting that you’re saying it because you care about them and the outcome and not just. You know, being a tyrant 

[01:07:25] David Orbuch: and blaming does nothing. Blaming does nothing.

I’ll give you another story from my life. I was running a hospital, CMS or the Joint Commission. The regulating body came in and they were going to do a four day review of our hospital to make sure that we met, you know, Jake O Standards, and we had a person on our team who was responsible for it, new president of the hospital.

I said to her, you got this. And they were like, yep, we’re good. We’re good. Jaco comes in, does this review. Friday afternoon comes, they come to us and I’m thinking, God, this is gonna be great. You know, we’re gonna be shining. And the Jaco reviewer sits down and says, well, the thirst thing I have to tell you is we’re going to shut down your hospital next week unless you change the sterilization process within the hospital.

I’m like, what? They said, you don’t have the sterilization process that we require of this type of a hospital, and you have a week to fix it. I’m like, oh my God. And so I ran to my boss who was in a different building, and you know, I said to my boss, Jayco is wrong. They’re looking at the wrong standards, but it’s gonna take two years to review.

It wasn’t my fault. We have someone who’s responsible for joint commission. They didn’t do their job, but even if they would’ve done this job, we wouldn’t have changed. It’s gonna cost $5 million to change the sterilization process. We don’t have the time, we don’t have the money. And he looks at me and he says, maybe I picked the wrong person to be president of this hospital.

I’m like, whoa. What would you think that was telling me like, stop blaming other people. Go do something. So I went back to the hospital and it was the first time we pulled an all-nighter since I was in college, I brought my team together and said, okay, what do we do? We gotta keep this hospital open because our patients and our doctors need us.

And so we put our heads together and we actually created a solution. Okay? We had to get some additional surgical equipment. We had to use, um, the community sterilization process. There were two hospitals nearby that we would then take a van and we would go bring our equipment to their hospital to do it.

We would bring it back and forth. It would cost a little bit of money. We had to go talk to the doctors and say, okay, we’re not gonna have the throughput in our ERs, uh, and our that, that we had before, but we’re also going to appeal it, and then we’re going to then change the sterilization process. It would take six months, it would take money.

He goes, what we would need. Monday morning, eight o’clock, I’m back at the my boss’s office in front of his office. As he walks in, he says, hi, David. And I said, hi. He says, what do you got for me? I said, I got four pages for you. He says, let’s go. I went through it and I told him, this is what we’re gonna do, A, B, C, D.

I said, the team is aligned. We’re ready to go. You know what he said, just do it. Okay. It was about taking accountability. Sure, I could have blamed other people, but I went back to my team and said, it’s go time, and it worked. It wasn’t the easiest, it wasn’t the best, but it was one of the best teams. I’ve been on a high performing team because we all knew what we had to accomplish.

There were no, oh, you’re the president, or you’re the COO, or You’re the CFO. We all knew we were in this together and we did it, and we succeeded. And that taught me a lot about leadership, and I use that every day in how I show up. It’s not about me, it’s not about my ego. It’s about. Am I passionate about what we’re doing for the organization?

Are we meeting the goals? Am I helping people thrive? If I can say at the end of the day I’m doing that great, and then hopefully my shadow is cast so that people who work for me do that same thing for the people that they work for, on and on and on. We build a leadership culture who appreciates and recognize that the shadow is critical to business results.

[01:11:35] Charles Eide: Are you glad that he said that to you when he said, I don’t know if I picked the right guy. Now that you’re talking like this? Yeah. I don’t know if 

[01:11:45] David Orbuch: that point in time I, I probably cried. I was like, oh my gosh. Disappointment is always a tough thing for me. When people are disappointed in me, I’m like, oh, I don’t think I was glad, but it showed a mirror to my face and like, oh yeah, David, you talk a good game about leadership, but when things go bad, like.

How are you showing up? And I realized I wasn’t showing up with accountability. I wasn’t showing up well, I was showing up with blame. I was showing up with not engagement in the solution. And that the recognition that there’ll be tough times. And he taught me in really short words. He didn’t say a lot, that’s all he said, but I knew what he was saying.

And he was someone that had been mentoring me. You know, I started out as a lawyer and ended up as a hospital administrator, only because a leader said to me, David, I think you know, you’re passionate about healthcare. Why don’t you learn how to run hospitals? And I was like, learn how to run hospitals.

Like I’m a lawyer, I know how to take depositions. I know how to, you know, do trial work. And he said, you know what? I’ll mentor you. And he mentored me all this time to finally, he said, David, you’re ready to run a hospital. And then he said to me, maybe I picked the wrong person. It’s like with your father saying, boy, I didn’t raise a son that knew what was going on.

And it made a huge difference in me. And again, like, you know, key leaders in my life, they’ve made a huge impact on me and how I show up. I try to be that same way for the people in my life. So looking back on it, it was kind of a gift that he said that to you. Didn’t sound or feel like a gift at that moment, but it was a 

[01:13:28] Charles Eide: gift.

[01:13:30] Final Thoughts: Culture Drives Performance

[01:13:30] Charles Eide: I learned a ton and think about it, how many years later? This is echoing in your mind. This 

[01:13:35] David Orbuch: is 30 years later. 

[01:13:37] Charles Eide: Yeah, 

[01:13:37] David Orbuch: I still remember what he said, how he said, and how I felt. I also remember that the team that I brought together that point in time, we were rocking. We had, we also had fun. It was stressful, but we had fun because we were passionate about what we were doing together.

[01:13:57] Charles Eide: And I’m sure you’re proud of the result. You turned out 

[01:14:00] David Orbuch: very much so. Just took 

[01:14:01] Charles Eide: a little heat. 

[01:14:01] David Orbuch: And the amazing thing is we did appeal it and we did win. So that’s the other thing. They were interpreting the regulation wrong, but it didn’t matter at the 

[01:14:11] Charles Eide: time. 

[01:14:11] David Orbuch: At the time, it didn’t matter if I was going to help the patients that needed our hospital for their care and the doctors who earned a living at our hospital, it didn’t matter to them.

And you know what? Who took responsibility? When they said, how come you didn’t know this? I had to say it was me. I made a mistake. I, we should have done something better. We should have been aware of this. Even though in the back of my mind, I wanted to say, well, the dog ate my homework. Like they’re interpreting the regulations wrong, but what does that do?

Not a thing. And I thought this whole time when we got it fixed, maybe I’d be let go because I had screwed up. But instead, my boss said to me, great work. Wow. Because it, you know what? Leadership is not always about the good times. It’s about how you show up in the bad times, and it’s the shadow you cast in both.

Because often when we’re under the most stress, we revert back to those negative behaviors, the blaming, the pointing fingers, the, oh my gosh, I don’t know what to do. The stress. It’s in those times that your shadow shows up and it’s the most important. It’s like the first thing in the morning. That shadow is critical.

You gotta show up and you say, okay, we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna do this together and we’re going to accomplish it. And so that team, I still am friends with those people. We still have fun today with each other because of that, even though we don’t work together any longer. 

[01:15:43] Charles Eide: Fought and battle together.

You got it. You got it. So I have two things I want to wrap up with. First. One is, if everything you’ve ever said or Tweeted or written or spoken about was erased overnight and you could tell the world one thing about leadership, what would it be? If you could leave us with one thing, 

[01:16:07] David Orbuch: culture drives performance.

That’s what I would say. The culture. Make it intentional. Bring it. To your organization because that is going to pay huge dividends for your organization. A high healthy performing culture outperforms those that don’t have those qualities. 

[01:16:30] Charles Eide: That’s so powerful. Okay, last question.

What do you want to be remembered for

[01:16:41] David Orbuch: wealth? Well, tough question because it really comes down to all three facets of my life. Um, I want to be remembered as a husband, a father, a community leader, and a business leader who had a strong shadow that helped others and, um, enjoyed what they were doing in all facets of their life. 

[01:17:11] Charles Eide: I think that that’s true already.

[01:17:13] David Orbuch: I hope so. I got great kids, wonderful spouse, and I love working with the people I’m doing and I just gotta remember every day to keep that shadow, intentional, think about it, journal about it, and when I’ve failed and I fail all the time, like I say, four to five times a day, pick myself up and say, how can I improve?

[01:17:35] Charles Eide: David Orach, thank you for coming and joining me today. I really appreciate it. 

[01:17:40] David Orbuch: It’s been great. Thank you, Charles. 

[01:17:42] Charles Eide: Hey, if you like this episode, make sure you subscribe, share it with somebody you like, and of course, make sure you check out my company EideCom. We produce conferences and events all over the US and if you know of a conference or an event that’s looking for the best company in the business, check out EideCom.com.